alternative reader no. 129
European
Inquiry Says CIA Flew 1,000 Flights in Secret
By Dan Bilefsky
The New York Times
Brussels
- Investigators for the European Parliament said Wednesday that data
gathered from air safety regulators and others found that the Central
Intelligence Agency had flown 1,000 undeclared flights over European
territory since 2001.
Sometimes the planes stopped to pick up terrorism suspects who had been
kidnapped to take them to countries that use torture, the investigators
added.
The
operation used the same American agents and the same planes over and over,
they said, though they could not say how many flights involved the
transport of suspects.
The
investigation, by a committee looking into C.I.A. counterterrorism
activities in Europe, also concluded that European countries, including
Italy, Sweden and Bosnia and Herzegovina, were aware of the abductions or
transfers and therefore might have been complicit.
"The
European Parliament deplores the fact that the C.I.A. has on several
occasions clearly been responsible for kidnapping and illegally detaining
alleged terrorists on the territory of member states, as well for
extraordinary renditions" to third countries, wrote Giovanni Fava of
Italy, a Socialist member of the European Parliament who led the
committee.
The
report, the first of several planned by the Parliament, grew out of three
months of hearings, including testimony by human rights advocates and
individuals who said they had been kidnapped by United States agents and
flown to other countries, including Egypt and Afghanistan, where they were
tortured.
As for
the question of secret C.I.A. detention centers in Europe, the new report
offered no hard evidence.
Its
estimate of 1,000 undeclared flights exceeds the numbers previously
discussed, including those in an analysis by The New York Times late last
year that said the agency operated about 300 flights in Europe between
November 2001 and the summer of 2005.
The
report's conclusions are likely to heighten trans-Atlantic tensions at a
time when Europe and the United States are already at odds over how to
balance civil liberties with the fight against terrorists.
The
inquiry was opened in January after The Washington Post reported that the
C.I.A. had hidden and interrogated suspected members of Al Qaeda at secret
prisons in Eastern Europe.
Mr. Fava
said the committee hoped to send a fact-finding mission to Poland and
Romania in September. Both countries have been cited as possible locations
for prisons.
Mr. Fava
said the investigation showed that agency planes had made hundreds of
flights and several secret stopovers in Europe, violating a treaty that
requires airlines to declare routes for police missions.
The
C.I.A. declined to comment on the specifics, but an agency spokesman
defended the practice of taking suspects to third countries, a process
known as rendition.
"Renditions are an antiterror tool that the United States has used for
years, consistent with its laws and treaty obligations," said the
spokesman, Paul Gimigliano. "The C.I.A does not condone or tolerate
torture, transport individuals to other countries for the purpose of
torture or knowingly receive intelligence obtained by torture."
Mr. Fava
emphasized that it was most likely that some authorities in Europe had
been aware that suspects were being detained on their territories. He
pointed to testimony by a senior prosecutor in Milan, Italy, Armando
Spataro, that a C.I.A. team had abducted a suspect, Abu Omar, in February
2003 in broad daylight before he was flown to Egypt.
Mr. Fava
also criticized Sweden for handing over two Egyptian suspects, Muhammad
al-Zary and Ahmed Agiza, to American agents who flew them to Egypt in
December 2001. Their case was brought to light by Swedish television in
2004.
"Sweden
has been criticized for this on numerous occasions, and we have taken a
number of steps in order for it not to happen again," Barbro Holmberg, the
minister for migration and asylum policy, said.
Mr. Fava
said the Parliament found that Bosnian authorities had handed over six
suspects of Algerian origin to C.I.A. agents without assurances that they
would not be tortured, and in defiance of a ruling by the human rights
court in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
27 April
2006
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