http://jurnalo.com/jurnalo/storyPage.do?story_id=18331
US refused EU investigator permission to visit Guantanamo Friday 16 February 2007 13:36 A top European investigator into alleged secret CIA detention centres and flights across the continent said Friday that the United States had turned down his request for a visit to the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The special investigator at the Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights watchdog, said the US?had denied him permission to question detainees at Guantanamo. "If I cannot speak freely with detainees - as I understand from the American reply - such a visit would be pointless," Council investigator Dick Marty said in a statement. He said that his aim was to question detainees about reports that they were earlier held in secret prisons in Europe. Marty, who requested the visit to Guantanamo in October 2006, had asked to go there in the company of the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak. The Strasbourg-based Council's investigator last year said that European governments have violated human-rights treaties by helping Washington carry out "extraordinary rendition" flights, the US practice of transporting detainees to other states for interrogation. The 46-member Council, which is independent from the European Union, also charged that Romania and Poland had hosted clandestine CIA camps. Bucharest and Warsaw, however, deny the allegation. Clandestine detention centres, secret flights via or from Europe to countries where suspects could face torture, or extraordinary renditions would all breach the continent's human rights conventions. US President George W Bush last September for the first time acknowledged that the CIA was running secret prisons for holding and interrogating high-level al-Qaeda figures captured since the September 11, 2001 attacks. However, Bush did not give in to European calls to make the location of the camps public. Allegations that CIA agents shipped prisoners through European airports to secret detention centres, including compounds in Eastern Europe, were first reported in November 2005. European lawmakers earlier this week concluded a separate probe into the CIA charges, slamming European governments and secret services for covering up clandestine US flights taking terrorism suspects across Europe. A final report by a special European Parliament committee says that more than 10 European states, including Britain, Italy and Germany, knew about the CIA's clandestine rendition programme. At least 1,245 CIA-operated flights flew over European airspace or stopped over at airports in Europe after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, the report said. dpa sch pmc +++ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
