With all the terror suspects kidnapped and tortured , I would have thought you would have gotten some very useful information about possible terror attacks or where Ben Laden is located… why does this take so long ?
CIA kidnapped terror suspects in the EU: lawmaker
Wed Apr 26, 2006 05:56 AM ET
A top European Union lawmaker on Wednesday backed allegations the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had kidnapped and illegally detained terror suspects on EU territory and flown them to countries who used torture.
“The CIA has, on several occasions, clearly been responsible for kidnapping and illegally detaining alleged terrorists on the territory of (EU) member states, as well as for extraordinary renditions,” Claudio Fava said in his first interim report of the European Parliament’s probe into the alleged CIA abuses.
A Washington Post report last November that the CIA had run secret rendition flights and secret prisons in Eastern Europe for al Qaeda suspects unleashed a spate of investigations which had so far failed to produce a “smoking gun.”
But earlier this month the Council of Europe, a human rights organization also investigating the alleged CIA abuses, said at least one European state had admitted to handing over terrorism suspects to foreign agents.
After hearing several of the alleged victims of kidnapping and renditions, the interim EU lawmakers’ report brings no “smoking gun” but comes to the same conclusions as the Council of Europe.
In his report Fava said EU legislations concerning secret services and monitoring of air space and foreign aircrafts are very insufficient and should be strengthened.
Claudio Fava said in his report that it would be very unlikely that the Italian authorities or secret services were not aware of the case of Abu Omar.
Milan Prosecutor Armando Spataro has said a CIA team seized terrorism suspect Abu Omar off a Milan street in broad daylight in 2003 before flying him to Egypt where he would have been tortured.
Fava’s report also refers to the case of two Egyptian terrorism suspects who were handed over to U.S. agents and flown home aboard a U.S. government-leased plane in 2001. Human Rights Watch has said there is credible evidence they were later tortured.
The European Parliament’s committee will send a delegation later this week to Macedonia, where German citizen Khaled el-Masri was arrested on December 31, 2003, and from where he was flown to Afghanistan and held for months as a terrorist suspect by the United States.
Masri, later freed without charge and dumped without explanation in Albania, is now suing the former head of the CIA.
Another group of Euro-MPs will head to Washington in early May, seeking meetings with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and CIA chief Porter Goss.
go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml … D=11968389
