Europeans ‘colluded’ on CIA rendition flights:

Dick Marty, the Swiss politician who compiled the report, said that seven countries had violated known individuals’ human rights by participating in what he called a “spider’s web” of CIA detentions and transfers. The countries involved were the UK, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Sweden, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

“Authorities in several European countries actively participated with the CIA in these unlawful activities,” he said. “Other countries ignored them knowingly, or did not want to know.”

... Mr Marty adds that although he had been unable to prove that the CIA had detention centres in Poland and Romania, the movements of well known “rendition aircraft” between the two countries and other countries indicated the existence of detention centres in both.

He says that the case of two British residents who were arrested in the Gambia in November 2002 and transferred to Afghanistan and finally to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, shows collusion between British security services and the CIA in “abducting persons against whom there is no evidence.”

The report recounts how MI5 sent the CIA a series of telegrams, made public at British High Court hearings this year, revealing the two men’s travel plans and repeating “false information”, including the allegation one of the men had carried a device that could be used for a home made bomb.

The report says that while the police finally decided the device was in fact only a battery charger on sale in stores such as Dixons and Argos, “there is no evidence that this information was ever conveyed to the CIA”.

It adds that the two men are still in Guantanamo Bay, adding that their “principal crime” is their acquaintance with a leading Islamist.