Torture flights report highlights 'see no evil' failures

4.59.31pm GMT Wed 1st Mar 2006

Sarah with PACE investigator and Swiss Liberal Senator Dick Marty

Liberal Democrat MEP Baroness Sarah Ludford, vice-chair of the European Parliament's committee on alleged CIA torture flights and secret jails, said of Council of Europe Secretary-general Terry Davis's finding that 'Europe appears to be a happy hunting ground for foreign security services':

"His shocking conclusion is that EU and other European governments have no idea if they are breaching the human rights commitments they signed up to."

"All European parliamentarians must jointly square up to our governments and be forceful in insisting on proper oversight and accountability in future."

"The close collaboration by members of the European Parliament with national parliaments via Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty will not be at all welcome to these governments, who want to keep hidden their possible complicity in human rights abuses and play us off against each other."

"If EU governments or officials refuse to cooperate with the MEP inquiry, we will have to conclude that they have something to hide."

Notes

The 46-member Council of Europe is not an EU body but all EU states belong to it. Set up in 1948 and based in Strasbourg, it supports the European Convention and Court of Human Rights and has a Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) composed of national parliamentarians (including British MPs and peers).

Former Labour MP Terry Davis, as Secretary-general of the Council of Europe, has conducted an analysis of replies by Council of Europe member states about procedures to monitor aircraft transit etc. Swiss Liberal Senator Dick Marty is chair of the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee of the Council of Europe and he is conducting an investigation into what has actually happened.

Last week Dick Marty met the European Parliament temporary committee on CIA and rendition, which is complementing the Marty inquiry by specifically looking at whether any of the 25 EU states have breached fundamental rights and if they should be sanctioned for breaking EU pledges.