International Herald Tribune Editorial - Europe and renditions
International Herald Tribune Editorial - Europe and renditions
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: June 11, 2006
Officials of countries named in the Council of Europe's latest report on European participation in U.S. "extraordinary renditions," the practice of secretly sending suspected terrorists to third countries for interrogation, detention or trial, have promptly and loudly declared that the allegations are old and unproved. That is partly true: Dick Marty, the Swiss senator responsible for the report, does not pretend that he has proof "in the classical meaning of the term," nor that the allegations are new.
But these are not valid excuses to dismiss the report. The Council of Europe is the continent's oldest human-rights organization, and Marty has amassed more than enough circumstantial evidence to justify making a strong case that the United States has woven a secret "spider's web" of disappearances, secret detentions and illegal interstate transfers.
According to the report, 14 Council of Europe member states either collaborated in or tolerated the operations, and two of them - Poland and Romania - may have harbored CIA detention centers. "Pure speculation," sniffed Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz of Poland. "Absolutely nothing new," said Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. "No real facts," said Sean McCormack of the State Department. If Marty's report is short on facts, it is because he did not have the legal powers to coerce any of the countries to cooperate, and he had to rely largely on flight logs provided by the European air traffic agency, on statements from people who said they had been victims of renditions, and judicial or parliamentary inquiries in some of the countries.
But it was not the Council of Europe's responsibility to act as judge; that, as Marty told a press conference in Paris, is the job of the governments implicated. Nor does Marty need to prove that renditions have taken place - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice publicly acknowledged them back in December, arguing that the practice is old and legal, and that prisoners are not sent abroad to be tortured. That is a claim the American public should closely examine, especially in light of other dubious practices the Bush administration has decreed to be legal, such as the indefinite detentions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
In much of Europe, renditions are illegal. In any case, they are wrong and counterproductive, since they only confirm the terrorists' depiction of Western societies as hypocritical in their claims to a rule of law. The Council of Europe has produced a strong indictment; European leaders would do well to hold the haughty sniffs and instead to find out what really happened.
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: June 11, 2006
Officials of countries named in the Council of Europe's latest report on European participation in U.S. "extraordinary renditions," the practice of secretly sending suspected terrorists to third countries for interrogation, detention or trial, have promptly and loudly declared that the allegations are old and unproved. That is partly true: Dick Marty, the Swiss senator responsible for the report, does not pretend that he has proof "in the classical meaning of the term," nor that the allegations are new.
But these are not valid excuses to dismiss the report. The Council of Europe is the continent's oldest human-rights organization, and Marty has amassed more than enough circumstantial evidence to justify making a strong case that the United States has woven a secret "spider's web" of disappearances, secret detentions and illegal interstate transfers.
According to the report, 14 Council of Europe member states either collaborated in or tolerated the operations, and two of them - Poland and Romania - may have harbored CIA detention centers. "Pure speculation," sniffed Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz of Poland. "Absolutely nothing new," said Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. "No real facts," said Sean McCormack of the State Department. If Marty's report is short on facts, it is because he did not have the legal powers to coerce any of the countries to cooperate, and he had to rely largely on flight logs provided by the European air traffic agency, on statements from people who said they had been victims of renditions, and judicial or parliamentary inquiries in some of the countries.
But it was not the Council of Europe's responsibility to act as judge; that, as Marty told a press conference in Paris, is the job of the governments implicated. Nor does Marty need to prove that renditions have taken place - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice publicly acknowledged them back in December, arguing that the practice is old and legal, and that prisoners are not sent abroad to be tortured. That is a claim the American public should closely examine, especially in light of other dubious practices the Bush administration has decreed to be legal, such as the indefinite detentions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
In much of Europe, renditions are illegal. In any case, they are wrong and counterproductive, since they only confirm the terrorists' depiction of Western societies as hypocritical in their claims to a rule of law. The Council of Europe has produced a strong indictment; European leaders would do well to hold the haughty sniffs and instead to find out what really happened.
posted by Carlos T Mock at 6:13 AM
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