Fourteen European nations colluded with U.S. intelligence in a "spider's web" of human rights abuses to help the CIA spirit terror suspects to illegal detention facilities, a European investigator said Wednesday.
A group of European Union lawmakers sought Tuesday to find out from U.S. officials, lawmakers and human rights groups whether any European countries were involved in secret CIA prisons or flights for terror suspects.
The EU foreign policy chief told a special committee Tuesday he had no information that CIA agents interrogated al-Qaida suspects at secret prisons in Europe and operated flights over European territory.
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.
NOTE: In a story March 30, The Associated Press quoted Manfred Nowak, the United Nations' special investigator on torture, as saying he wanted access to alleged secret U.S. prisons in Europe, adding that he was "100 percent sure" they existed.
In its most detailed report yet on alleged secret rendition flights of terror suspects, Amnesty International said three former detainees have lent support to the idea that eastern European countries may have been involved in secret CIA flights to so-called "black site" prisons.
The United Nations' special investigator on torture said Thursday he was certain that there are secret U.S. prisons in Europe and he wants access to them.
European nations should toughen their laws to control foreign spies inside their borders, the continent's leading human rights official said Wednesday as he released a report on alleged CIA transfers of suspected terrorists through Europe.
A Human Rights Watch official told a European Parliament committee Thursday that Washington has taken great efforts to conceal any evidence of alleged CIA secret detention centers and flights in Europe.