Amnesty International and MEPs Sarah Ludford (ALDE, UK), Ana Gomes (SD, PT), Raul Romeva (Greens, ES), Willy Meyer (GUE, ES)  today called on European institutions and EU Member States to take further action after recent developments involving Europe’s role in the CIA rendition and secret prison programme. 

Since the approval of the EP report on CIA flights and secret prisons on EU soil and the resolutions in 2007 and 2009, further developments have confirmed both active and passive collaboration of EU Member States in these illegal practices. A February 2010 UN report on secret detentions identified a number of EU member states as complicit in such practices, including Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and the UK. Unfortunately, to date there has been an extremely poor record of government cooperation in seeking accountability for serious human rights violations committed in the context of the US-led "war on terror."  

MEPs joined Amnesty International in calling on EU Member States to recommit themselves to full, impartial and effective enquiries into allegations of complicity in renditions to torture, the existence of secret detention facilities on their soil and to holding perpetrators criminally liable for these abuses. MEPs have also announced that they will request the Commission and the Council to come to the EP to hold a debate on the need for action by the EU on the CIA’s rendition activities and the presence of secret prisons on EU soil at one of the forthcoming sessions. 

For more information please contact: 

Neil Corlett: +32-2-284 20 77 or +32-478-78 22 84

e-mail: neil.corlett@europarl.europa.eu

Federica Terzi: +32-2-283 23 24 or +32-494 18 88 31