AI report: Europe’s role in rendition and secret detention

Amnistía Internacional publicou antonte un informe de 76 páxinas sobre o papel de varios Estados europeos nas detencións e entregas secretas ás axencias dos Estados Unidos no marco da “guerra contra o terrorismo”. Entre os Estados europeos mencionados no informe están Alemaña, Reino Unido, Italia, Suecia, Romanía, Polonia, Austria, Portugal, Bosnia e Macedonia.

O informe leva por título “State of denial: Europe’s role in rendition and secret detention”. Copio o principio da súa introducción:

Police in Bosnia and Herzegovina arrested Mustafa Aït Idir and five other men. An Italian officer aided the abduction of Usama Mostafa Hassan Nasr, usually known as Abu Omar, in Milan. Macedonian officials seized Khaled el-Masri. Swedish police picked up Ahmed Agiza and Mohammed El Zari. Information supplied by German security forces may have led to the arrest of Muhammad Zammar in Morocco, and telegrams sent by UK security forces resulted in the detention of Bisher Al-Rawi and Jamil El-Banna in the Gambia.

What unites all these detainees is what happened to them next. All were transferred to the custody of another state, covertly and outside any judicial process, and transported to another country. Some were transferred from US custody to countries where they faced a real risk of torture or other ill-treatment; others were transferred to detention centres in Afghanistan or Guantánamo Bay. All found themselves locked away in places where the rule of law seemed not to apply, where no one would tell them what was going to happen to them next. Some were victims of enforced disappearance, including in US custody. All say they were tortured or otherwise ill-treated. In short, all were victims of the US-led rendition programme.

The involvement of European states in such cases has long been known, despite repeated denials and obfuscation by individual governments. However, the extent of their involvement has become increasingly clear and disturbing as more and more information has emerged as a result of investigations into European involvement in the US “war on terror”. [...]