Amnesty Int'l Asks European Nations to Admit Role in CIA Torture Operations

MOSCOW, January 20 (Sputnik) — European governments must acknowledge their participation in CIA secret counter-terrorism operations, including the use of torture, bring perpetrators to justice and pledge to permanently abstain from those tactics, Amnesty International said, in a statement issued Tuesday.

"The time for denials and cover-ups is over. European governments implicated in CIA counter-terrorism operations must urgently conduct an effective, broad-based investigation and reform the laws, policies, and practices that allowed such grisly and illegal practices to take place," Julia Hall, counter-terrorism expert at Amnesty International, was quoted as saying in the press release.

The rights group has issued its report, "Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence: USA's European 'partners in crime' must act after Senate torture report," in the wake of the December 2014 US government "torture report", documenting secret CIA detention centers in Lithuania, Poland and Romania. Other CIA allies named in the illegal counter-terrorism operations include the United Kingdom, Germany and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

"Without European help, the USA would not have been able to secretly detain and torture people for so many years. The Senate report makes it abundantly clear that foreign governments were essential to the 'success' of the CIA operations — and evidence that has been mounting for nearly a decade points to key European allies," Hall added.

Amnesty International stressed that some countries have already admitted their involvement in CIA's illegal operations. UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced that Britain has begun an investigation into the involvement of that the country's security agencies in CIA kidnapping, detention and torture practices.

Any inquiry by the UK Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament cannot be independent, however, and there is a risk that government investigative committees will withhold important data on national security considerations, the Amnesty International report added.

"All those responsible for torture and enforced disappearances on the territories of European states should be criminally charged and held accountable after fair trials; and justice must be served for the victims of torture," Hall concluded.

In December 2014, the US Senate Select Intelligence Committee issued a 500-page executive summary of an exhaustive 6000-page report of CIA interrogation techniques used on alleged terrorists following the 9/11 attacks. The document describes a wide range of CIA torture practices, such as waterboarding, mock executions, prolonged sleep deprivation and threats of sexual abuse. In addition, the report revealed that the intelligence agency knowingly withheld information and outright lied to the US Congress about its counter-terrorism activities.