HRF/198/09

31 August, 2009

Torture and rendition: Exhuming Continental Europe’s recent record

The objectives enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights are undoubtedly high-minded and admirable. In Rome, Paris and Strasbourg, the convention’s contracting parties pledged to “secure to everyone within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms defined in… [the] Convention.”[1] Now, fifty years on, there appears to be a yawning divide between the rhetoric binding the members of the Council of Europe and their conduct, particularly where Article 3 of the Convention is concerned. “No one,” Article 3 affirms, “shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”[2] In their acceptance of the unlawful rendition of terrorist suspects and their prosecution of the war on terror, the members of the Council have undeniably violated the spirit of that agreement.  

Unlike Continental Europe, the US and the Obama administration are currently insisting on a commendable degree of transparency. Earlier this week, in a reversal of Pentagon policy, the US military divulged the identities of militant suspects held at secret camps in Iraq and Afghanistan to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).[3] Moreover, the Congressional House Intelligence Committee’s review of the CIA’s unauthorized assassination programme, effective under the Bush administration,[4] has thrust the CIA back into the spotlight. Meanwhile, watchdogs such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights and Human Rights Watch, among others, continue to ensure that a culture of impunity does not descend on the US.[5] In contrast, in Continental Europe, watchdogs of the calibre of the ACLU are close to non-existent; the civil and institutional checks present in the US are conspicuously absent. As a result, while the US and UK’s counter-terrorism efforts have been cauterized in the public domain, Continental Europe has emerged largely unscathed. An honest re-examination of Continental Europe’s record on torture and rendition is now in order.  

A careful review of Europe’s complicity, over the last few years, in the CIA’s rendition efforts reveals an entire array of missteps, exposing a seriously problematic record where torture and rendition are concerned. Passive and lethargic cooperation – Sweden and Switzerland’s naïve reliance on diplomatic assurances, for example – characterise one end of the spectrum; a dangerous lack of transparency and a deliberate obfuscation of the truth – in the case of Macedonia – mark the other side.  

In short, as the following spectral analysis should demonstrate, Continental Europe’s recent record on torture and rendition can be described as woefully negligent at best, and pernicious at worst. 

"Diplomatic assurances”: A pretext for negligence 

Sweden and Switzerland have both been guilty of a complacent reliance on diplomatic assurances. The Agiza-Alzery incident[6], involving two Egyptian asylum seekers in Sweden, remains a paradigmatic case in point. In December of 2001, after rejecting the asylum applications of Mohammed Agiza and Ahmed Alzery, Swedish authorities promptly whisked the two men to Sweden’s Bromma airport. There, in an attempt to expedite the deportation process, the two men were handed over to American agents, with the full consent and backing of Sweden’s law enforcement personnel. The ensuing “security check” has been roundly condemned by the United Nations Committee against Torture (UN-CAT)[7]. Swedish authorities, notably, witnessed the abuse and manhandling of the two men, yet readily signed off on diplomatic assurances from the Americans that the two men would not be tortured after their transfer to Egypt. Human Rights Watch has corroborated that these assurances were breached, confirming that neither received a fair trial in Egypt and that Mr. Agiza was undeniably tortured for a span of two years, following his forced return.  

Two principal concerns come to mind. First, did the Swedish authorities at Bromma genuinely accept those diplomatic assurances at face value? After all, Egypt’s notorious record on torture and human rights has been widely documented. Recall former CIA agent Robert Baer’s thoughts on the issue: “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.”[9] But even if we extend the Swedes the benefit of the doubt and fault them for negligence and naiveté alone, how do we charitably parse their passive acceptance of the “security check” at Bromma? After all, Swedish police stood by and watched as Agiza and Alzery were stripped naked and severely manhandled, notably, on Swedish soil. It came as no surprise, then, that the Swedish government was less than forthcoming with the UN-CAT’s investigation of the Agiza-Alzery incident.  

The Swiss government, too, has repeatedly used diplomatic assurances to supplant the need for true due diligence. In June of 2005, after multiple US aircraft suspected of carrying detainees completed their transit through a Swiss airbase, Swiss authorities were content to accept vague and belated verbal assurances from Washington that the US had neither disrespected Switzerland’s sovereignty, nor trafficked US detainees through Swiss airspace[11]. These assurances, reminiscent of those employed during the Abu Omar incident of 2003, ought to have carried little credibility.

In 2003, Milanese judicial authorities confirmed that the US had transported the abducted Egyptian imam Abu Omar from Aviano to Ramstein via Swiss airspace; Italian officials, moreover, had also confirmed that the American head of the Milan operation had stayed in Switzerland in the weeks prior to Abu Omar’s abduction[12]. Nevertheless, Swiss authorities opted to ignore the evidence put forward, choosing instead to conveniently accept vacuous verbal assurances from an American official.  

Come si dice “torture”? 

While the Omar incident underscores Switzerland’s timid and half-hearted track record, it has been billed as a triumph for Italy’s prosecuting authorities. However commendable the efforts of Italy’s law enforcement personnel after Abu Omar’s abduction, the conduct of Italy’s Justice Minister at the time is deeply condemnable and indicative of the Italian government’s perverse response to the case. Following Abu Omar’s abduction and his transfer to Egypt in February of 2003, Milan’s authorities identified 25 of the CIA agents responsible for the operation and issued arrest warrants against 22 of them.  

In response, however, the Italian Justice Minister refused to move forward with any of them, feigning complete ignorance regarding the abduction[14]. The Italian government, moreover, refused to press American authorities for an explanation. Abu Omar had been the focal point of a Milanese surveillance operation prior to his abduction[15], indicating that the Minister’s response and the government’s stance were entirely disingenuous. The Omar case, then, remains the most visible marker of the Italian government’s duplicitous record with regard to torture and rendition.  

“Black sites” in Poland and Romania: Re-embracing Ceausescu’s legacy 

While the Italian response to the Omar case was disturbing, neither the Polish nor the Romanian government has yet to acknowledge that the CIA operated secret detention sites in the two countries between 2003 and 2005, reason for even greater alarm. In late 2005, multiple sources – including The Washington Post, ABC News and Human Rights Watch – pointed to the probable existence of these detention sites. Moreover, Special Rapporteur for the Council of Europe Dick Marty assessed the likelihood that these sites existed, with the assistance of Eurocontrol and Europe’s air traffic authorities, suggesting that CIA aircraft transited through Poland and Romania from known detention centres and along established rendition circuits. His analysis ruled out alternate explanations, including the possibility that the flights into Romania and Poland were for logistical or fuel-related purposes.[16] In 2006, following the release of these reports, neither Romania nor Poland conducted transparent parliamentary inquiries into the allegations. Both governments emphatically denied the existence of such sites, yet refused to make the results of their investigations public. Ever since 2006, however, the evidence surrounding the existence of these sites has grown even weightier, suggesting that individual office-holders – including the former Romanian President Ion Iliescu – knew about and authorized the CIA’s detention operations.[17] Yet, the Polish and Romanian governments remain in denial[18], insisting on a dangerous lack of transparency and demonstrating a blatant disregard for the truth.  

Macedonia and the Masri case 

The cover-up perpetuated by the Romanian and Polish governments is trumped perhaps only by the Macedonian government’s handling of the El-Masri case of 2004, for which the Ministry of the Interior continues to insist on a fabricated version of the truth. Detained at the Serbian-Macedonian border over alleged irregularities with his passport, Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, was subsequently detained and interrogated at a hotel in Skopje, after which he was repeatedly harassed and tortured until his transfer to Kabul.[19] El-Masri’s account, corroborated by forensic evidence, scientific testing, aviation logs and geological records, diverges markedly from the Macedonian Interior Minister’s “official version”, which completely omits El-Masri’s detention at a hotel in Skopje and numerous other pertinent and incriminating details. As Dick Marty notes in an explanatory memorandum from June 2007, “the ‘official version’ of El-Masri’s stay in ‘the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’ has definitely become utterly untenable.”[20] The Macedonian Interior Ministry nevertheless continues to adhere to this doctored and untenable official story, clearly aware of just how damning the truth would be.  

Holding Europe accountable 

The menu of transgressions detailed above, and the list of offending countries, is undoubtedly only partial. Yet they capture the broad and varied sweep of Continental Europe’s offenses in the recent past. The continent’s missteps and failings in the war on terror need to be considered along with those of the US and the UK. They are grave and worthy of more attention.

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