copyandpaste

MEPs grill CIA report author over his accusations

17.07.2007 - 17:44 CET | By Renata Goldirova
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.

Biography:

A married father of three and a lawyer by trade, Dick Marty holds a doctorate in law, and began his career as a specialist on Swiss law.

He lived in Freiburg, Germany, from 1969 until 1975, based at the section on Swiss law at an academic institution in the city.

He returned to Switzerland in 1975, taking up a position as state prosecutor in the canton of Ticino, where he ran vigorous campaigns against drugs and organised crime.

Much of Mr Marty's career has been spent within Ticino politics. He was elected onto the canton's executive in 1989 after a glittering stint as prosecutor that included commendations by the US government and anti-drug agencies.

He continued as a member of the Ticino executive until 1995, when he entered elected office, first in Switzerland.

Move to Strasbourg

Later, in 1998, he was elected to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, where he sits with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.

Within the council, Mr Marty serves on a number of influential committees.

He chairs the legal affairs and human rights committee and serves on the political affairs committee, among a host of others.

"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.

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.

The most serious charges against any European countries are made against Poland and Romania. Flight data provided to the Council of Europe investigator had documented the very frequent use by the CIA of two minor airports in these countries, thus strongly indicated that CIA prisoners had been held detained here for longer or shorter periods - contrary to international law and the European Convention on Human Rights.

The report only goes into detail on incidents in member countries of the European Council, not speculating on what may have happened at other destinations. The report nevertheless published a map of "the global 'spider's web' of secret detention and unlawful inter-state transfers." The map is based on the detailed flight data Mr Marty had obtained, and covers the global operations of the CIA prisoners' transports.

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.

however the germans are working on the case..............

CIA Arrest Warrants Strain US-German Ties

By John Goetz, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark (excerpts)

The arrest warrants German authorities have issued against 10 CIA agents have strained German-American relations. Now, prosecutors in Munich want the agents extradited to Germany so they can stand trial for their alleged roles in the illegal kidnapping of terror suspects.

The 11-story apartment complex on Washington Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia, couldn't be in a more pleasant location. The buildings offer distant views across the Potomac River, there are no names, only numbers, on the mailboxes and apartment doors. There is a good reason for this secrecy in Washington. The buildings are home to many employees of the Defense Intelligence Agency, other residents include CIA officers like Lyle L., who lives in apartment 801 .

But the orderly world of a handful of US intelligence agents is about to be turned upside down. The district attorney's office in Munich has filed international warrants with Interpol for the arrest of Lyle L., 51, and nine other CIA employees. Lyle L., a former member of the elite Green Berets combat unit, is alleged to have been part of a group of agents who kidnapped Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese-born German citizen, in Macedonia in January 2004 and flew him to Afghanistan via the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. A trained medic, Lyle L. was probably the one who administered sedatives to Masri on board the Boeing 737.

Officials in Washington have since realized that the German investigation is more than just a symbolic act. This week in Berlin, a group of senior officials from the interior, foreign and justice ministries will meet to discuss the sensitive issue of how the German government should handle the Munich petition for "arrest for the purposes of extradition." There is general agreement within the government in Berlin that the request should be promptly delivered to the Bush administration, which would be tantamount to an official request for the arrest of the men being sought.Lyle L. was probably the only person who would have had reason to be concerned about this request until now because he was the only member of the CIA team that allegedly abducted Masri who could be identified by his real name. But now the German investigators are in the process of uncovering the identities of the remaining CIA kidnappers, an effort that will further strain an already tense German-American relationship.

Tracking the Agents

Initially the effort seemed almost pointless for the Germans because, with the exception of Lyle L., the names on all of the arrest warrants were aliases. At Langley, false identities are seen as an effective intelligence tool that normally puts a stop to any investigation. But the US agents were not as smart as the police had assumed -- or perhaps criminally negligent. Thanks to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), all it took was a simple computer search for the investigators in Old Europe, without any official assistance from the US Department of Justice, to determine the real names of "Captain James Fairing," "Eric Fain" and "Kirk James Bird." In its database of registered pilots, the FAA keeps careful track of who registers, under what names and when they register. The database includes the names of anyone who ever acquired a pilot's license in the United States. It even includes Mohammed Atta, one of the suicide pilots of the Sept. 11 attacks.Munich district attorneys knew the captain of the Boeing 737 which carried Khaled el-Masri to Afghanistan after a stopover in Palma de Mallorca had the fictional name of "Fairing." Discovering his real identity became a matter of simple detective work. All a researcher had to do was enter the name "Fairing," along with other details -- such as his licenses to fly certain aircraft models, or special personal characteristics -- into the FAA database. The system soon produced the pilot's real name.

A number of agents who are stationed in Europe or took part in the kidnappings have since obtained private insurance policies to protect them against their victims' claims for damages. Because global warrants have been issued for their arrest, the affected CIA agents face the risk of detention upon crossing almost any border outside the United States.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,k-7142,00.html