PanARMENIAN.Net
Turkish Military Base Served as Staging Point for Launching CIA Renditions
09.06.2006 15:55 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The United States has progressively woven a
clandestine `spider’s web’ of disappearances, secret detentions and
unlawful inter-state transfers – spun with the collaboration or
tolerance of Council of Europe member states, the Legal Affairs
Committee of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) said
today.
In a draft resolution adopted at a meeting in Paris, based on a report
by Dick Marty (Switzerland, ALDE), the committee said hundreds of
persons had become entrapped in this web – in some cases when they
were merely suspected of sympathizing with a presumed terrorist
organization. The parliamentarians said this knowing collusion of
member states took several different forms, including secretly
detaining a person on European territory, capturing a person and
handing them over to the US or permitting unlawful `renditions’
through their airspace or across their territory. Among “staging
points” for launching CIA renditions, Marty identified Adana-Incirlik
in Turkey, and Baku, Azerbaijan.
`It has now been demonstrated incontestably, by numerous
well-documented and convergent facts, that secret detentions and
unlawful inter-state transfers involving European countries have taken
place, such as to require in-depth inquiries and urgent responses by
the executive and legislative branches of all the countries
concerned,’ the committee said. The committee called on Council of
Europe member states to review bilateral agreements signed with the
United States, particularly those on the status of US forces stationed
in Europe, to ensure they conformed fully to international human
rights norms. The report is due for debate by the plenary Assembly –
which brings together 630 parliamentarians from the 46 Council of
Europe member states – in Strasbourg on 27 June 2006.
For his part, Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis stated
that Senator Marty has carried out a great deal of work under
complicated conditions. `He has brought serious accusations as regards
several European states. I would like to note that governments of some
states have refuted the accusations immediately. However I consider
that before refuting the governments had to clear up whether an
investigation was carried out. I intend to prepare a number of
proposals targeted at prevention of such violations of human rights in
Europe.’