PARIS (AFP) - Fourteen 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, according to a Council of Europe report released.
"It is now clear -- although we are still far from establishing the whole truth -- that authorities in several European countries actively participated with the CIA in these unlawful activities. Other countries ignored them knowingly, or did not want to know," the report said.
It listed Sweden, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Britain, Italy, Macedonia, Germany and Turkey as countries "responsible, at varying degrees ... for violations of the rights of specific persons."
Seven other countries "could be held responsible for collusion -- active or passive": Poland, Romania, Spain, Cyprus, Ireland, Portugal and Greece.
Drawn up by Swiss parliamentarian Dick Marty, 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.
My reaction: So what?
So the CIA is secretly transporting terror suspects around. That's their job. They are in the business of gathering intelligence on our enemies (and, frankly, the enemies of free societies everywhere) and part of that entails capturing those who may be involved with terrorism and finding out what they know. It is done secretly becaue, for obvious reasons, we don't always want the terrorists to know that we've captured and/or interrogated someone.
Should we be torturing people? No. But there is no evidence that we are torturing people outside of claims from the terror detainees themselves - not exactly objective - as well as the predictable blather from enemies of our foreign policies.