Horror and errors

The tenth anniversary of the attack on the Twin Towers in New York is drawing close (11 September 2001) and the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe Thomas Hammarberg, in the Human Rights Comment released on September 1st wrote that the attack “was a crime against humanity, the gravity of which must not be forgotten”. He underlines that “respects should again be paid to those who lost their loved ones”. Hammarberg equally points out that the anniversary is “an occasion to analyse whether the official responses to the attacks have been proper and effective”. He stresses: “countless further crimes have been committed” in the course of the past ten years of a “global war on terror”. Europe and “rendition”. The Commissioner mentions the “broad coalition” built by the United States, of which he appreciates the “prompt response”. However, he criticises “the misjudged choice of methods” since, in his view, “in attempting to combat crimes attributed to terrorists, countless further crimes have been committed”, many of which “have been carefully and deliberately covered up”. For Hammarberg “these circumstances call for a self-critical review – also here in Europe”, where “government authorities have been deeply complicit in the counter terrorism strategies pursued by the US Central Intelligence Agency”. They “permitted, protected and participated in CIA operations which violated fundamental tenets of our systems of justice and human rights protection”. The framework for this co-operation was the “RDI Program”, the CIA policy of Rendition, Detention and Interrogation. “Based on the official information we now possess”, he continues, “there is no doubt that all three elements of this program have entailed systematic violations of human rights”. “A degrading and humiliating practice”. “Through rendition”, continues the Commissioner, the CIA captured individual suspects on foreign territories, often with the assistance of the local security services, and flew them to some specific third countries to be interrogated. This technique “kept the suspects outside the reach of any justice system and rendered them vulnerable to ill-treatment”. A rapporteur for the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, Senator Dick Marty, described in a 2006 report how terrorist suspects, many of them completely innocent, were becoming entrapped in a “global spider’s web” in which for Hammarberg can be seen “a clear thread of European complicity”.In October 2001, reports the Commissioner, most European states signed up “to classified blanket authorisations” for overflight and access to airfields. But “many governments – both within and outside NATO – also engaged in separate, secret bilateral agreements or clandestine joint operations with US military and intelligence agencies”. In December 2001, reads the Comment, “Sweden handed over two Egyptian asylum-seekers to a team of masked CIA paramilitaries at Stockholm’s Bromma Airport”. The team proceeded to blindfold, beat, strip naked and photograph the two men, and then forcing them aboard a waiting aeroplane which took them to detention in Egypt, where they were tortured. This “degrading and humiliating rendition practice”, Hammarberg remarks in the Comment, “was performed in other European countries from 2002 to 2004”. One victim was Khaled El-Masri, a German car salesman, who underwent two renditions after being apprehended by Macedonian authorities: first to Afghanistan; and then to Albania, where he was dumped on a remote hillside “in an apparent effort to cover up what US officials later had to concede was a ‘mistake'”, underlines the Commissioner.Stop to impunity. In the opinion of the CoE Commissioner, it is deplorable that concealment and cover-ups have been governments’ characteristic responses instead of investigating the “rendition” cases. Hammarberg accuses the Swedish government for having misled a parliamentary committee “that sought to clarify the facts” and furthermore “gave erroneous information to a UN human rights body. The version of the El-Masri case presented by the Macedonian authorities has been “evasive and lacking in credibility. “Elsewhere”, he goes on, “diplomatic or judicial decisions were taken to keep unwanted revelations out of the public domain”.For Hammarberg “Governments across the European continent have acted in line with the wishes of the US to prevent proper investigations, and particularly judicial scrutiny, of the abuses arising from rendition operations. The message is clear – good relations between the security agencies are deemed more important than preventing torture and other serious human rights violations”. “This approach – he cautions – is a grave mistake. It has undermined prospects of redress for the victims and shielded those who organised and performed the rendition “takeouts” from answering the charges against them”. So far, is the Commissioner’s conclusion, “Europe has granted effective impunity” to those who committed crimes. “An urgent re-think is required to prevent this misjudged and failed counter-terrorism approach from having a sad legacy of injustice”.