2006-01-26 Europe

TelePolis writes about Europe’s media and politicians ignoring the CIA torture prisons on their own soil ¹ and quotes Dick Marty (a Swiss!):

TelePolis

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In fact, we must go beyond ascertaining the existence or non-existence of secret detention centres in Europe. The issue at stake is even more important than that. The current US Administration obviously considers that the traditional instruments of the democratic State governed by the rule of law – justice, constitutional guarantees of a fair trial, respect for human dignity – are inappropriate for facing up to the terrorist threat. Persons assumed to be terrorists are therefore arrested, interrogated, deported and detained without any rights or safeguards, thus accepting the concrete and inevitable risk of subjecting completely innocent people to such treatment (inside the CIA an internal inquiry is reportedly under way into several cases of individuals who were abducted, imprisoned and tortured, before it emerged that the wrong people had been targeted). Is Europe prepared to accept such an approach? Can we really say that human rights are an obstacle to national security? Can there be any real security without respect for human dignity? – Dick Marty, Alleged secret detentions in Council of Europe member states, §102.

Alleged secret detentions in Council of Europe member states

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