From Expatica

“This all looks like a poor B-movie,” said German Green MEP Cem Oezdemir, adding: “It doesn’t seem to be an appropriate behaviour for a country which wants to become an EU member.”

BRUSSELS – European Union lawmakers Thursday accused Macedonia of giving “very contradictory information” on what it knew about the alleged abduction by the CIA of a Lebanese-born German national on its territory.

“Macedonian officials had a well-prepared official version, but there were many contradictions, and many new questions arose during our trip,” said Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann, a German member of the European Parliament.

Members of a European Parliament committee investigating alleged CIA activities in Europe last week went to Macedonia to quiz top government officials on what they knew about – and if they were involved – in a high-profile case of the US-practice of extraordinary rendition or the secret transfers of a suspect to a third country for interrogation, often under torture.

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Gabor Rona, International Legal Director for Human Rights First, is in Geneva observing the United States’ presentations to the Committee and will also brief the Committee on several issues of concern.

His daily bog on the proceedings can be read here

From the Financial Times

Washington to defend record on torture before UN

Washington will on Friday be called upon to defend its record on torture before an international forum for the first time since the September 11 attacks on the US sparked the ‘war on terror’.

The US has sent a 30-strong delegation to Geneva to answer questions from the United Nations committee against torture concerning abusive treatment of detainees in Guant’namo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In what one UN human rights official said was ‘the longest list of issues I have ever seen’, the committee has also asked the US to supply detailed information about secret detention centres, ‘extraordinary renditions’ and other apparent violations of the UN convention on torture it ratified in 1994.

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From BBC Online

European MPs have flown to Macedonia to investigate claims by a German citizen that he was seized by US agents and taken to Afghanistan for interrogation. The MEPs are members of a committee probing allegations about secret CIA flights and prisons in Europe.

On Wednesday, MEPs said the CIA had run more than 1,000 flights within the EU since 2001, often transporting terror suspects for questioning overseas. The US admits to some of the flights but denies condoning torture.

‘Extraordinary rendition’

The MEPs are in Macedonia until Friday in order to investigate the case of Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese origin. He was arrested in Macedonia in 2003. After that, what happened to him is not clear. He says he was handed over to the Americans and taken to Afghanistan, where he was interrogated and mistreated.

After several months he was taken to Albania and released without charge, he says. American officials did later acknowledge Mr Masri was mistaken for someone else and had been wrongly detained. He is now suing the CIA and the Bavarian state prosecutor is investigating his claims.

The MEPs will meet the Macedonian prime minister and other senior officials. However, the BBC’s Alix Kroeger in Brussels says Macedonia is balancing its interests. It has begun applying for EU membership but it is also keen to show itself to be an ally of the US in the war on terror, she says.

MEPs’ investigation

A European parliament report said many EU states had ignored the hundreds of CIA flights that had used their airports. The report’s author, Italian Socialist MEP Claudio Fava, singled out Sweden, Italy and Bosnia, which is not an EU member, for particular criticism. A string of former detainees have come forward with stories alleging kidnap and transport by the US for interrogation in third countries – a process known as “extraordinary rendition”. Some have provided detailed accounts of alleged torture carried out in secret prisons outside EU or US jurisdiction.

Mr Fava accused European governments of breaching the Chicago aviation convention, under which all flights used for police purposes have to declare their route, destination, the names of crew and passengers. None had been asked to do so by any European government. Moreover, the flight paths, confirmed by the European air safety organisation Eurocontrol, “seem rather bizarre”, he told the BBC.

According to Eurocontrol, the Boeing plane used for the abduction of Mr Masri flew on another occasion, between September 22-23, 2003, from Kabul to Poland to Romania to Morocco and to the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Mr Fava said. “It is hard to think that those stopovers were used simply to refuel,” he said.

The committee has until next January to complete its investigation.

The BBC’s Oana Lungescu in Brussels says the focus of the investigation will now shift to the possible existence of secret detention centres in Europe. The European Parliament has uncovered no evidence so far, and neither has the Council of Europe, the human rights body also investigating the allegations.

Last year, Human Rights Watch said such centres were based in Poland and Romania – but both countries have strenuously denied any involvement, as have all the other European governments.

From the New York Times

BRUSSELS, April 26 ‘ Investigators for the European Parliament said Wednesday that data gathered from air safety regulators and others found that the Central Intelligence Agency had flown 1,000 undeclared flights over European territory since 2001.

Sometimes the planes stopped to pick up terrorism suspects who had been kidnapped to take them to countries that use torture, the investigators added.

The operation used the same American agents and the same planes over and over, they said, though they could not say how many flights involved the transport of suspects.

The investigation, by a committee looking into C.I.A. counterterrorism activities in Europe, also concluded that European countries, including Italy, Sweden and Bosnia and Herzegovina, were aware of the abductions or transfers and therefore might have been complicit.

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From the New York Times

BRUSSELS, April 20 ‘ The European Union’s antiterrorism chief told a hearing on Thursday that he had not been able to prove that secret C.I.A. prisons existed in Europe.

“We’ve heard all kinds of allegations,” the official, Gijs de Vries, said before a committee of the European Parliament. “It does not appear to be proven beyond reasonable doubt.”

But Mr. de Vries came under criticism from some legislators who called the hearing a whitewash. Kathalijne Buitenweg, a Dutch member of Parliament from the Green Party, said that even without definitive proof, “the circumstantial evidence is stunning.”

“I’m appalled that we keep calling to uphold human rights while pretending that these rendition centers don’t exist and doing nothing about it,” she said.

Many European nations were outraged after an article in The Washington Post in November cited unidentified intelligence officials as saying that the C.I.A. had maintained detention centers for terrorism suspects in eight countries, including some in Eastern Europe. A later report by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch cited Poland and Romania as two of the countries.

Both countries, as well as others in Europe, have denied the allegations. But the issue has inflamed trans-Atlantic tensions.

Mr. de Vries said the European Parliament investigation had not uncovered rights abuses despite more than 50 hours of testimony by rights advocates and people who say they were abducted by C.I.A. agents. A similar investigation by the Council of Europe, the European human rights agency, came to the same conclusion in January ‘ though the leader of that inquiry, Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, said then that there were enough “indications” to justify continuing the investigation.

A number of legislators on Thursday challenged Mr. de Vries for not taking seriously earlier testimony before the committee of a German and a Canadian who gave accounts of being kidnapped and kept imprisoned by foreign agents.

The committee also heard Thursday from a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who said: “I can attest to the willingness of the U.S. and the U.K. to obtain intelligence that was got under torture in Uzbekistan. If they were not willing, then rendition prisons could not have existed.” But Mr. Murray, who was recalled from his job in 2004 after condemning the Uzbek authorities and criticizing the British and American governments, told the committee that he had no proof that detention centers existed within Europe.

He said he had witnessed such rendition programs in Uzbekistan, but he seemed to back up Mr. de Vries’s assertion when he said he was not aware of anyone being taken to Uzbekistan from Europe. “As far as I know, that never happened,” he said.

While he was ambassador, Mr. Murray made many public statements condemning the government of President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan for its poor human rights record.

At the time, the Bush administration was using Uzbekistan as a base for military operations in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Murray, who has remained an outspoken critic of American and British policy toward Uzbekistan, has since been criticized by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain for breaching diplomatic protocol.

From Deutche Weller

A former British ambassador to Uzbekistan turned up the heat on Germany Thursday when he told a European Parliament committee that Germany had received information “most certainly obtained under torture” in Uzbekistan.

The allegations emerged when the European Parliament committee, currently investigating allegations of CIA human rights abuses made last year by human rights groups and the media, questioned former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray.

Murray’s 21-year diplomatic career came to an end two years ago, when he accused the United States and Britain of endorsing torture by using confessions obtained through torture from prisoners in Uzbekistan.

Speaking in Brussels Thursday, Murray reiterated that the CIA transported prisoners from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan to obtain confessions in former Soviet jails by using torture.

The US has acknowledged secret renditions but has denied endorsing torture.

Asked about allegations of secret flights operated by the CIA from Europe, Murray said he had no evidence proving flights from EU countries but categorically knew that flights had transported ethnic Uzbeks from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan.

Murray went on to claim that the German secret service worked in close proximity with the Uzbeks and continues to do so, stressing that he had no doubt that Germany used information “most certainly obtained under torture,” by the Uzbek secret service, and insisting that he had seen with his own eyes prisoners who had clearly been victims of brutal mistreatment.

As far as he knew, neither Americans not Europeans were actually present during torture sessions, but the information elicited was passed on both to the CIA and Britain’s MI6.

Asked by the committee at the European Parliament who, apart from the CIA and MI6, had been working together with Uzbekistan, Murray replied that the only embassy with which the Uzbeks have had full co-operation was the German embassy.

He also said he had the impression that many officials at the German embassy were very concerned by the co-operation, a conclusion he reached after “private conversations,” which he was not prepared to discuss with the committee.

German parliamentarians have demanded an immediate investigation into Murray’s claims, with one member of parliament for the Green party, Hans-Christian Str’bele, also advising that the enquiry should take place in the public eye.

Wolfang Kreissl-D’rfler of the SPD party, says that Murray’s claims raised serious questions that demanded answers.

The European Parliament’s committee has heard several cases by alleged victims of CIA secret flights. One such victim was the German citizen Khaled Al-Masri, who was flown to Afghanistan and held for several months as a terrorist suspect by the United States.

The European Union’s anti-terrorism co-ordinator says that there is no proof yet that the CIA organised secret flights and ran detention centers for terror suspects. But a group of EU lawmakers is set to travel to Washington DC in May to meet with the CIA chief Porter Goss and further investigate the allegations.

From The International Herald Tribune

Maher Arar, a wireless technology consultant and a Canadian citizen of Syrian origin, goes on holiday with his family to Tunisia. On his way home to Canada he transits via New York’s JFK airport. There, he is detained by U.S. officials and interrogated about alleged links to Al Qaeda. Twelve days later, he finds himself chained, shackled and flown aboard a private plane to Jordan and from there transferred to a Syrian prison.

In Syria, he is held in a tiny grave-like cell for 10 months and 10 days before he is moved to a better cell in a different prison. He is beaten, tortured and forced to make a false confession.

This is “extraordinary rendition” – the unlawful transfer of people from one country to another. It is part of the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” with other governments turning a blind eye.

Planes associated with rendition flights have landed and taken off from dozens of destinations around the world, including Britain, Germany, Jordan, Afghanistan and Albania. Flight logs and airport records show that nearly 1,000 flights directly linked to the CIA have used European airspace.

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