The European Union has reported that the CIA spirited scores of Al Qaida-aligned
suspects from Europe to Morocco in October and November 2005.
An EU investigation concluded that the suspects were moved out of jails in
Europe by the CIA to avoid a backlash by Brussels.
The CIA has refused to respond and
Morocco issued a denial.
"To my knowledge, those detainees were moved about a month ago, maybe a
little more," Swiss Sen. Dick Marty, who investigated the episode for the
Council of Europe, said. "They were moved to North Africa."
The investigation concluded that the CIA had kept the Al Qaida insurgents
in Poland and Romania from 2002 through 2005, Middle East Newsline reported. Over the last month, all of
the agents were said to have been removed from European prisons.
Marty said the Al Qaida detainees were taken by the CIA to Morocco, a
leading U.S. ally in North Africa. The detainees were captured by U.S. troops in
Afghanistan during the war in late 2001 and 2002.
"Legal proceedings in progress in certain countries seemed to indicate
that individuals had been abducted and transferred to other countries
without respect for any legal standards," Marty said in a briefing to the
legal commission of the Council of Europe. "The elements we have gathered so
far tend to reinforce the credibility of the allegations concerning the
transport and temporary detention of detainees -- outside all judicial
procedure -- in European countries."
EU officials said Marty would submit a full report to the council's
parliamentary assembly by February 2006. They said the investigation
also determined that the CIA abducted Al Qaida suspects from Europe in 2003.
"The really difficult thing is the idea that there is a kind of legal
black hole in the middle of Europe," legal committee member Tony Lloyd said.
For his part, Marty cited the CIA abduction of Egyptian cleric Osama
Nasser in Milan, Italy in 2003. He also said the CIA might have sent a
Lebanese-born German, Khaled Al Masri, from Italy to Afghanistan.
Al Masri was said to have been released in Albania in May 2004. Marty
said the United States refused to provide information for the EU probe.
The investigation has also been hampered by a refusal by some of the
Council of Europe's 46 member states to cooperate. Marty cited Switzerland,
used as a CIA stopover in the agency's transport of Al Qaida prisoners to
and from Europe.
"We have clues that show that [Poland and Romania] -- and perhaps
others -- were implicated, insofar as people were temporarily held there,"
Marty said. "Not in camps or classic prisons, but temporary stays."
Marty has also sought to obtain air traffic logs from European
countries. Britain was said to have been the most resistant to cooperation.
"Credible information suggesting that foreign nationals are being
transported by officials of another state, via the United Kingdom, to
detention facilities for interrogation under torture, would imply a breach
of the [UN torture ] convention and must be investigated," James Crawford,
professor of international law at Cambridge University, told the all-party
British parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition.
