BRUSSELS, Belgium - The CIA has conducted more than 1,000 clandestine flights
in Europe since 2001, and some of them secretly took away terror suspects to
countries where they could face torture, European Union lawmakers said
Wednesday.
Legislators selected to look into allegations of questionable CIA activities
in Europe said flight data showed a pattern of hidden operations by American
agents, and they accused some European governments of knowing about it but
remaining silent.
Cases of terror suspects being secretly handed over to U.S. agents did not
appear to be isolated, the lawmakers said in a preliminary report on their
inquiry. European human rights treaties prohibit sending suspects to states
known to torture prisoners.
"The committee deplores the fact that, as established during the committee's
investigation, the CIA has used aircraft registered under fictitious company
names or with private companies to secretly transfer terror suspects to other
countries including Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Afghanistan," according to a copy
of the report obtained by The Associated Press.
The CIA declined to comment, as did European Union officials, who have said
previously that there was no irrefutable proof of such hand-overs, which are
known as "extraordinary renditions."
The investigation began in January after news reports that U.S. agents had
interrogated al-Qaida suspects at secret prisons in eastern Europe. But the
focus shifted after people gave detailed accounts of being abducted by U.S.
agents in Europe and whisked away to jails in the Middle East, Asia and North
Africa.
Few of those who testified at the committee hearings touched on the alleged
secret prisons in eastern Europe first reported by The Washington Post in
November. Italian lawmaker Giovanni Fava, who wrote the report, said the
committee would look into those allegations later.
The lawmakers based their initial report on data provided by Eurocontrol, the
EU's air safety agency, and more than 50 hours of testimony by EU officials,
rights groups and individuals who said they were kidnapped and tortured by U.S.
agents.
Eurocontrol said the number of clandestine CIA flights over Europe was likely
to be higher than 1,000 because the agency checked only flight plans for fewer
than 50 aircraft used by the CIA.