The Parliament of the European Union has issued a new rebuke of the CIA practice of secretly transferring and jailing prisoners and of the countries that aided the program. On Wednesday, the European Parliament voted to accept a report criticizing 15 European countries and Turkey for helping the CIA’s extraordinary rendition and then failing to cooperate with an investigation into their activities.
Carlos Coelho, chair of the EU Investigating Committee: “The council did not behave in a loyal cooperation as the treaty oblige every European institutions. They lied to the Parliament, when they pretend to supply documents, pretending they were the real documents. In fact, they were a short part of the real documents. We know that because we got from a confidential source the real document after.”
At least 1,200 CIA flights were found to have passed through Europe. The report was adopted after Parliament voted to delete sections calling for sanctions against several countries for violating human rights. Lawmakers had faced intense pressure to accept the watered-down version. Baroness Sarah Ludford of the investigating committee also addressed the European Parliament.
Baroness Sarah Ludford:”What the U.S. needs is not to be feared but to be respected. I don’t rejoice in the fact that the latest survey in global opinion finds that antagonism against America at an intense pitch. Even in Poland, fewer than four out of 10 have a positive view of the U.S. Europe has failed a test in the last five years, a test of whether it will practice its values or only preach them. We’ve lacked the gut to refuse to collude with torture flights, and lacked the vision to use Europe’s capacity to be a real and united best friend to America, and it’s about time that we actually practiced those values.”