Rapporteur over CIA activiteiten onder vuur in Europees Parlement (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty has faced tough criticism from the European Parliament on Tuesday (17 July), after accusing two lawmakers of covering up CIA activities in Poland and Romania, without revealing his sources.

Following months of investigation, Mr Marty has identified two current MEPs - Marek Siwiec from Poland and Ioan Mircea Pascu from Romania - as being among those who were fully aware of CIA kidnappings, rendition flights and prisons in their respective countries.

However, the Swiss investigator stopped short of revealing sources for the information, as well as failing to consult the two parliamentarians before publishing their names.

"Mr Marty doesn't support his accusations with concrete evidence and thus, is undermining the credibility of the Council of Europe", Mr Pascu, Romania's former defence minister, said.

"I hope light will be shed on the case as soon as possible", Mr Siwiec, formerly in charge of military intelligence in Poland, added.

Both socialist MEPs have decided to trigger legal action against Dick Marty.

The socialists, the second strongest entity in the Parliament, have backed their group members, with Dutch MEP Jan Marinus Wiersma urging a clear line be drawn between facts and beliefs. "It is dangerous to base accusations on anonymous sources", he said.

But the CIA report author, Mr Marty, has refused to bow under the pressure, saying "I have no reason to withdraw the names and am not prepared to apologize".

In addition, he defended the method of his investigation as "legitimate", given "the seriousness of suspensions" and "the wall of silence" built around EU states.

"We met with a wall of silence when asking member states...This silence was designed to cover significant violation of human rights", Mr Marty said, adding that his report includes only cross-checked information.

Duty to provide the truth

The report published on 8 June is critical of several EU states, but particularly of Warsaw and Bucharest, the two EU capitals reportedly permitting secret and illegal CIA prisons.

There is "now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA [existed] in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania," the report states.

In addition, it criticised NATO for signing a deal with the US within weeks of the 9/11 attacks, allowing civilian jets used by the US intelligence service during its so-called extraordinary rendition programme to move across member states' airspace.

"We have sufficient grounds to declare that the highest state authorities were aware of the CIA's illegal activities on their territories", the report continues.

According to the UK's liberal MEP Sarah Ludford, "those who challenge the report have a remedy: put all the documents in the public domain so we can compare evidence".

For his part, Dick Marty has reiterated his call to break the silence by launching in-depth legal investigations in the respective countries, saying "we are political representatives and have political demands...There is a duty to provide the truth".

"Are we lawyers for our national governments or defenders of our common European values?", Mr Marty concluded.