AI slams EU over terror suspects abuse

Amnesty International has criticized the European Union for failing to blame EU governments for the “abuses” committed against CIA’s terrorism suspects.

The call comes as the organization released a report titled “Open Secret: Mounting Evidence of Europe’s Complicity In Rendition And Secret Detention,” ahead of EU-US talks in Portugal on November 20.

The report gathered information and evidence of the involvement of European countries in covert CIA programs such as kidnapping, illegal detention, secret flights and torture under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

It also uncovered the deep role of officials from Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and Britain in the torture of terror suspects.

“The EU has utterly failed to hold member states accountable for the abuses they’ve committed,” said the director of Amnesty International’s European institutions office, Nicholas Berger.

“These abuses occurred on European soil. We simply can’t allow Europe to join the US in becoming an ‘accountability-free’ zone. The tide is slowly turning with some countries starting investigations, but much more needs to be done.”

Reactions from the European government, however, were quite poor, the report said.

“As more information trickles out, it will be harder and harder for the United States government to continue to stonewall when it comes to accountability,” Amnesty researcher Julia Hall told reporters on Monday.

“So the processes that are happening in Europe, we do have hopes that they will have some kind of an impact across the Atlantic in the United States,” she added.