Time to end EU complicity in torture

[struggle4progress]

By Benjamin Ward <associate Europe and central Asia director at Human Rights Watch>

CIA flights are only half the story when it comes to European complicity in torture. Much less well-known is the fact that EU member states themselves have directly undermined the global torture ban in the name of countering terrorism.

Investigations carried out by the European Parliament’s Temporary Committee and the Council of Europe have made real progress in uncovering European involvement in illegal CIA activity. And criminal investigations are under way in several EU countries, including Italy, where prosecutors are examining the kidnapping by alleged CIA agents of Muslim cleric Abu Omar on a Milan street in 2003, and Germany, where prosecutors are looking into the 2003 abduction of German national Khalid el-Masri in Macedonia.
But European complicity in torture does not begin and end with CIA activity in Europe. The draft report due to be adopted by the Parliament’s Temporary Committee on Tuesday (23 January) will touch on an issue that has received little public attention thus far: the practice of returning terrorism suspects to places where they face the risk of torture, based on empty promises of humane treatment.

Europe pioneered the use of these no-torture promises, known as “diplomatic assurances”, well before the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US. And EU governments – notably the UK and Sweden – have been among their most enthusiastic exponents.

The UK’s attempt to use diplomatic assurances to return terrorism suspects dates back to the mid-1990s. But the use of such promises became a central plank of London’s counter-terrorism strategy only in 2004, when British judges ruled that foreign suspects could not be detained indefinitely in the UK. The UK is currently trying to deport terrorism suspects based on blanket no-torture promises from countries like Jordan and Libya ...

http://www.europeanvoice.com/current/article.asp?id=27139&print=1

[Briar]

1. This complicity shames us

and reveals the hypocrisy with which we sign international agreements and regard international bodies.