EU governments complicit in shady CIA activities – investigator

[struggle4progress]

by David Lindsay


Governments across the European Union have “collaborated, tolerated or looked away” from the United States Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine operations on their countries’ soil for the last two to three years. This is expected to be one of the main findings that will be revealed on Tuesday when a Council of Europe (COE) inquiry presents its interim report on the use of European territory for the practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’.

The preview was given by Swiss COE senator Dick Marty, tasked with heading a wide-sweeping investigation into allegations that member States have hosted CIA flight stopovers and detention centres linked to the highly controversial practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’.

One of the more unsavoury phrases to have been integrated into everyday English last year, ‘extraordinary rendition’ refers to the US practice of clandestinely transporting terrorism suspects aboard private aircraft owned by CIA shell companies to secret prisons in countries where torture is used as a routine interrogation technique ...

The Malta Independent on Sunday has reported a total of eight stopovers at Malta International Airport by seven different aircraft implicated in the practice. The reasons for the stopovers, all carried out between 2003 and 2005, are still unknown ...

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