America`outsourced torture'

Investigator says detainees flown to secret prisons
`Highly unlikely' European nations unaware: Report

Jan. 25, 2006. 01:00 AM
JAN SLIVA
ASSOCIATED PRESS

STRASBOURG, France—The United States has developed a system for "outsourcing" torture, the head of a European inquiry into alleged CIA secret prisons said yesterday, accusing European governments of turning a blind eye to breaches of human rights.

But Swiss Senator Dick Marty's report failed to uncover tangible evidence proving clandestine detention centres existed in Romania or Poland as alleged by the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

His interim report, based partly on results of national investigations and recent media reports, did not break new ground and largely repeated his previous claims that U.S. policies in the war on terror contravene international law on human rights. Allegations the CIA hid and interrogated key Al Qaeda suspects at Soviet-era compounds in Eastern Europe were first reported Nov. 2 in The Washington Post.

"There is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of `relocation' or `outsourcing' of torture," Marty said in the report to the Council of Europe, the human rights watchdog on whose behalf he is investigating.

"Acts of torture or severe violation of detainees' dignity through the administration of inhuman or degrading treatment are carried outside national territory and beyond the authority of national intelligence services," Marty said. He added that more than 100 suspects may have been transferred by U.S. agents to countries where they faced torture or ill treatment in recent years — a process known as "rendition."

"It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware,'' Marty added. [...]