II Council of Europe
| Date | 01 March 2006 |
| Author | Yves Haeck,Leo Zwaak |
| Published date | 01 March 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1177/016934410602400106 |
| Subject Matter | Part B: Human Rights News |
116
II COUNCIL OF EUROPE
LEO ZWAAK and YVES HAECK
1. SECRET DETENTION CENTRES IN MEMBER STATES OF THE
COUNCIL OF EUROPE
In November 2005 a heated debate on the allegations about secret detention centres
in Council of Europe member States was initiated by a memorandum published by
Dick Marty, the rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
(PACE) who is investigating these allegations. He referred to suspicious movements
by 31 aircraft allegedly belonging to entities with direct or indirect links to the CIA,
and believed to have been used by the CIA to transport prisoners in the ‘war against
terrorism’. According to the rapporteur, it should be possible, with the help of
Eurocontrol, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (i.e. a civil
and military organisation currently numbering 35 member States, that coordinates
and supervises European en route air traffic through its control centre in Maastricht)
to establish a pattern of the movements of the aircraft concerned, which could be
compared with information on, for example, the departure from Kabul of aircraft
carrying prisoners. In the rapporteur’s view, co-operation from Eurocontrol is vital
in order to obtain, if not evidence of the existence of secret detention centres, then
at least fairly clear indications that airports located in Council of Europe member
States have been used for purposes which require more detailed explanations from
the United States.
In two countries (Italy and Germany), judicial investigations have begun into the
‘abduction’ of persons, subsequently transported to Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan
or other detention centres, using some of the aircraft. The Italian prosecution
service has issued arrest warrants against several CIA agents following the forceful
abduction of an Islamist, Abu Omar, in a street in Milan in February 2003. The
German judicial authorities are taking part in this investigation and have begun
another into the case of a German citizen of Lebanese origin, Khaled Al-Masri.
Arrested by mistake in Macedonia, he was transported to Kabul where he was
interrogated. Lastly, Spanish Interior Minister Jose´ Antonio Alonso announced on
15 November that a Spanish judge is to investigate whether the Son Sant Joan airport
on the island of Mallorca was used by the CIA as a base to transport Islamist suspects.
In addition, according to recent press reports, the Norwegian Government is said to
have asked the US Embassy for information on the landing in Oslo on 20 July of an
aircraft alleged to have been used by the American authorities to transport
suspected extremists. Similarly, it is believed that the Swedish Government has asked
the civil aviation authorities for ‘full information’ following press reports that several
aircraft suspected of belonging to the CIA had landed at Swedish airports in the last
three years. Lastly, the Swiss authorities, following a parliamentary question, are
attempting to ascertain whether aircraft chartered by the CIA had violated Swiss
sovereignty and international law by landing on several occasions in Geneva in 2003-
2004.
On a proposal from Democratic Senator John Kerry, the American Senate has
asked the Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for a detailed confidential report to
be submitted to the Senate and House of Representatives Defense Committees on
knowledge of the Secretary and his staff of the present or past existence of secret
facilities outside the United States, used to detain individuals captured in the global
war against terrorism, run by or at the request of the US Government (Amendment
SA 2507 to Defense Appropriations Bill S. 1042, tabled on 10 November 2005 and
adopted by the Senate by 82-9 votes). According to a CNN report carried in the press
the CIA is said to have launched an investigation to discover the source of the
information on which the Washington Post article on secret prisons in eastern
Europe was based, and to have handed the file over to the Justice Department. The
US President George W. Bush, in response to allegations of secret prisons where
detainees are claimed to have been tortured, merely denied any use of torture in an
interview on 7 November and added that his country was ‘at war’ and that his
government ‘had the obligation to protect the American people’.
Following publication of the allegations, several political leaders in the countries
named have issued denials worded in different ways. Romanian Prime Minister Calin
Tariceanu has said that ‘there are no CIA bases in Romania’. When asked whether
Romanian Government agents had ever co-operated with the CIA by receiving
prisoners and whether she could explain the alleged CIA flight details, the chief
government spokeswoman, Oana Marinescu, simply said: ‘In the portfolio of
projects of the Romanian government, there is no activity such as the one that you
refer to’. The former Polish Defence Minister, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, said: ‘We aren’t
detaining terrorists, or interrogating them, or doing anything else with them’. In a
statement forwarded to the Council of Europe on 14 November by the Permanent
Representative of Poland, the spokesman of the Polish Government, Konrad
Ciesiolkewicz, said that the Polish Government strongly denied the allegations in the
media on the existence of secret prisons for foreign terrorists in the Republic of
Poland. There are no such prisons in Poland and there are no prisoners held in
contravention of the laws and international treaties to which Poland is a signatory
State. According to the BBC (3 November 2005), Czech Interior Minister Frantisek
Bublan said that his country, along with 10 others which he did not name, had
rejected a US request to ‘take’ prisoners being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison
camp base. But the Prague Daily Monitor (9 November) reports more specifically
that the US request had related to prisoners from a Chinese province held in
Guantanamo Bay who had turned out not to be connected with Al-Qaida, and who
could not be returned to their own country as they would be under threat there. The
request was to ‘place’ these individuals under the political asylum procedure and
therefore not to put them in any secret or other prisons.
The International Red Cross publicly stated that it has tried unsuccessfully for
more than two years to persuade Washington to allow it access to prisoners secretly
detained abroad in the ‘war against terrorism’. According to information from
Russian and international human rights NGOs and the Council of Europe’s
Committee for the Prevention of Torture, it would appear that there have been and
continue to be secret illegal detention centres on the territory of the Russian
Federation. It should be examined to what extent this subject should be included in
the report that could be prepared hereupon. Mr. Marty stated that it is clear that we
cannot limit ourselves solely to the ‘secret prisons’ issue, and that we must include
the use – or misuse – by the United States of facilities located in our European
II Council of Europe
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 24/1 (2006) 117
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