EU endorses damning report on CIA

The European parliament has approved a report which states that members colluded with the US in acts of rendition that allowed the CIA to whisk suspects off to secret detention centres where it is alleged they may have been tortured.

The UK, Germany and Italy were among 13 states which allowed the US to forcibly remove terror suspects, lawmakers said.

The EU parliament voted to accept a resolution condemning member states which accepted or ignored the practice.

The EU report said the CIA had operated 1,245 flights, some taking suspects to states where they could face torture.

The report was adopted by a large majority, with 382 MEPs voting in favour, 256 against and 74 abstaining.

Although the report has no basis in law it has been welcomed by Amnesty International who are now calling for European country's to have their own independent enquiries, which will never happen as many country's involved have already been berated in the report for failing to co-operate with the inquiry.

Many of those taken from EU states were subjected to torture to extract information from them, the report said.

It said there was a "strong possibility" that this intelligence had been passed on to EU governments who were aware of how it was obtained.

It also uncovered the use of secret detention facilities used as the flights made their journey across Europe towards countries such as Afghanistan.

The report defines extraordinary renditions as instances where "an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism is illegally abducted, arrested and/or transferred into the custody of US officials and/or transported to another country for interrogation which, in the majority of cases involves incommunicado detention and torture".

Centre right groups in the European parliament have already condemned the report as "anti-American", as if torture and rendition were somehow American values.

This is where the fear and panic in the war on a noun has led certain people. There are politicians who will actually condemn the people who expose torture and rendition, implying that they are motivated out of hatred for the US rather than revulsion at the acts that are being carried out in all of our names.

I've never understood how this right wing mindset works. They seem to think that one can win a "battle of civilisations" (as they love to portray it) by giving up the very values that define us as civilised.

One would have hoped that there would at least be a sense of shame once this activity was exposed but no, what we have is a rush to question the integrity and intentions of the people exposing the crime. Extraordinary.

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tag: war on terror, extraordinary rendition, US foreign policy, European parliament, CIA, torture,