The US Senate report
released in December
“reveals new facts that
reinforce allegations that a number of EU member states, their authorities and officials and agents of their security and intelligence services were complicit in the CIA’s secret detention and extraordinary rendition programme, sometimes through corrupt means based on substantial amounts of money provided by the CIA in exchange for their cooperation”, say MEPs in a resolution approved by 363 votes to 290, with 48 abstentions.
In the light of this new evidence, the European Parliament has instructed its civil liberties, foreign affairs and human rights committees to resume their investigations into the alleged transportation and illegal detention of prisoners in EU countries by the CIA and to report to plenary within a year.
This inquiry would entail, said MEPs in a statement, sending a parliamentary fact-finding mission to the EU countries where CIA secret detention sites allegedly existed and gathering all relevant information and evidence on possible bribes or other acts of corruption linked to the CIA programme.
The European Parliament further argued that a climate of impunity surrounding the CIA programme has “enabled the continuation of fundamental rights violations”, as further revealed by the mass surveillance programmes of the US National Security Agency (NSA) and secret services of various EU member states, stressing that “there can be no impunity” for these violations.
Parliament has also called on the US to investigate and prosecute the multiple human rights violations resulting from the CIA programmes and to cooperate with all requests from EU countries for information, extradition or effective remedies for victims in connection with the CIA operations.
On the EU side, MEPs have expressed their concerns about the obstacles encountered by national parliamentary and judicial investigations, the abuse of state secrecy, and the undue classification of documents resulting in the termination of criminal proceedings. They again ask member states to investigate the allegations that there were secret prisons on their territory and to prosecute those involved in the CIA-led operations.
A report published back in 2013 by Open Society Foundations, entitled ‘Globalising Torture - CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition’, named Portugal as a knowing and willing accomplice of the United States’ “global campaign of torture” in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The 216-page report explains how the Central Intelligence Agency embarked on a highly classified programme of secret detention and extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects. The programme, it says, was designed to place detainee interrogations beyond the reach of law.
Suspected terrorists were seized and secretly flown across national borders to be interrogated by foreign governments that used torture, or by the CIA itself, in clandestine “black sites” using torture techniques.
It details for the first time what was done to the 136 known victims, and lists the 54 foreign governments, including Portugal, that participated in these operations.
The report explains that Portugal clearly permitted use of its airspace and airports for flights associated with CIA extraordinary rendition operations.
A 2006 Council of Europe report found that Portugal, among other countries, was used for “stopovers” for flights involving the unlawful transfer of detainees.
A February 2007 European Parliament report further noted that CIA planes associated with extraordinary renditions made 91 stopovers in Portugal, that “the aircraft involved in the rendition of Maher Arar and Abou Elkassim Britel made stopovers in Portugal on their return flights,” and that “aircraft from a number of countries, travelling to or from Guantanamo, made 17 stopovers (including three contained in Eurocontrol lists) at the Portuguese airports of Lajes and Santa Maria between 11 January 2002 and 24 June 2006.”
In addition, during 2003 and 2004, Portugal is also said to have allowed use of its airports and airspace for at least five flights operated by Richmor Aviation, a company that operated CIA extraordinary rendition flights.