CIA ‘carried out up to 50 renditions’

THE US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has sent up to 50 suspects since 2001 to countries where they could face torture, a European Union investigator probing the CIA’s actions in Europe said today.

Claudio Fava, an Italian member of the European Parliament, said members of his team were given the information by US intelligence officials during a visit to the United States last week.
The sources also had said the agency ran secret prisons in Europe, Asia and Africa.

The United States has come under intense fire over the last year following press reports that the CIA has flown suspects in the US “war on terror” across European airspace since the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The prisoners were reported mainly to have been taken through Europe to third countries in a process known as “rendition”, in which the transfers take place outside the legal framework of an extradition agreement.

“More than one source in the CIA, senior officials, explained to us that there were 30 to 50 renditions, not including people arrested and taken to Guantanamo Bay,” the US naval base prison in Cuba, Mr Fava said.

He could not say whether the suspects had been picked up in Europe, were flown through the continent’s airspace or transported through its territory, or if any were of European origin.
He said the intelligence officials told investigators that the renditions were acceptable in that they were part of the “war on terror”.

Indeed senior US officials have acknowledged that a few renditions have taken place.

The Italian deputy said the officials were asked about the secret prisons in Europe - in particular facilities, now thought closed, in Poland and Romania - and that “they told us there were prisons in Europe, Asia and Africa”.

Mr Fava also accused the White House of putting pressure on the US media - an editor of the Washington Post and television stations - not to make public the names of countries suspected of allowing secret CIA prisons on their territory.

The head of the inquiry, Portuguese MP Carlos Coelho, said information gathered in the United States showed that the “transfer program would not have been possible without the help of European governments”.

Copyright 2006 News Limited.