AFP
GENEVA • Swiss Senator Dick Marty said yesterday that the latest volume of his report for the Council of Europe into the alleged secret transfer of terrorist suspects by the United States will include statements from disgruntled CIA agents.
“They spoke to me because they found what was happening to be disgusting,” Marty said in an interview with Swiss newspaper La Liberte.
Their statements will help to “strengthen the findings of the first report published on June 6, 2006, on the secret activities of the CIA in Europe,” Marty said.
The latest volume of his report will be presented to the Council of Europe on June 8 in Paris.
Last year’s report found that 14 European countries colluded in or tolerated the secret transfer of terrorist suspects by the United States, and two of them—Poland and Romania—may have harboured CIA detention centres.
The report identified a “spider’s web” of landing points around the world used by the US authorities for the practice of “extraordinary rendition”—the undercover transfer of security suspects to third countries or US-run detention centres.
The Swiss senator told La Liberte that he believed Western governments had signed secret agreements after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States to give more power to their security services.
“This is why some countries are opposed to my investigations,” he said.
Marty would not specify which countries he had in mind, but did say that Britain, France and Germany “knew what was happening... but they didn’t act.”
He also believes secret flights by the US Central Intelligence Agency are continuing, “but I like to think this is not happening any more in Europe.” He was also sharply critical of the so-called “war on terror” launched by US President George W Bush after September 11, saying it was an excuse to attack personal freedoms.
“The war on terror is a pretext to curb individual liberties. These (liberties) irritate those who are in power,” Marty said.
Posted by marga at Mayo 9, 2007 5:22 PM | TrackBack