Europe’s Complicity: A Web Of “Detentions & Transfers”
June 7, 2006 (2 Responses)
TODAY THE LEGAL AFFAIRS committee of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) said the United States has progressively woven a clandestine “spider’s web†of disappearances, secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers – spun with the collaboration or tolerance of Council of Europe member states. Check out the map for a birds eye view of the routes used by the CIA.
For anyone (like myself) following this story this latest press release today by the Council Of Europe is not exactly news and I’ve certainly covered it before, however what is interesting is the sheer level of detail today’s announcement goes into. Just look at the PDF or HTML version of the report for a few minutes and you will see the depth of information gathered by the investigators into this affair thus far – which is impressive considering the lack of co-operation being received from some member states in particular.
For me however the key phrase from the report is the following one, issued by the Committee:-
“It has now been demonstrated incontestably, by numerous well-documented and convergent facts, that secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving European countries have taken place, such as to require in-depth inquiries and urgent responses by the executive and legislative branches of all the countries concerned.”
The report is due for debate by the plenary Assembly – which brings together 630 parliamentarians from the 46 Council of Europe member states – in Strasbourg on 27 June 2006. As always I’ll keep you informed of progress.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and a few other NGOs, have designated June Torture Awareness Month. We’ve created a blogroll you can join if you’re interested. You can find it here. The idea is that everyone is linked to from the blogroll, and in exchange, you discuss torture (as you already do), and link to the Torture Awareness site to help support the NGOs.
There’s a lot of bloggers concerned about human rights abuse in the War on Terror. If we coordinate, we can show our support and help Amnesty and HRW make Torture Awareness Month a success.
elendil,
I’ve created a permanent link on my site to Torture Awareness [dot] org and will gladly continue to publish and discuss issues relevant to torture and human rights here at Howl @ The Moon!. Please create a recriprocal link at your end and direct as many people as you wish to me. I shall continue the good fight from this end.