The Guardian 22 February 2006
Europe and extraordinary renditions
Let us, for the sake of argument, set aside geography and imagine that a business jet, known to be owned by a Colombian drug baron, regularly stops to refuel at European airports on its way to a destination in the United States. When this is discovered by the press, the authorities of the European countries concerned shrug off any criticism by arguing that these were only technical stops; and that they had no way of knowing that the plane was in fact not carrying a group of Medellin women heading for a shopping spree in Miami. Would that get them off the hook? I do not think so.
The relevance to the controversy about alleged CIA activities in Europe is that, in the 46 member states of the Council of Europe, drug smuggling, forced disappearances, secret detentions and torture are all illegal. Consequently, European governments are obliged to exercise due diligence in preventing such things from taking place, not simply react if they stumble upon them accidentally.
The Council of Europe has been faced with the challenge of absolute prohibition of torture under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights – which is at the core of the most recent controversy - for years. Our Parliamentary Assembly has repeatedly condemned “extraordinary rendition” and warned the governments of the 46 member states against any participation or support for such activities which are clearly illegal under human rights treaties. Similarly, my own efforts to obtain access for the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture to the KFOR administered detention facilities in Kosovo started as soon as I took office as Secretary General of the Council of Europe in September 2004.
Frankly, most of the threats to human rights and civil liberties in the context of the fight against terrorism result from legal manoeuvres taking place in the open. The recent decision of the Italian, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Slovakian and British governments to join the Dutch in the case Ramzy vs Netherlands and thus challenge the long standing jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights on the absolute ban of torture is only one example. Since it lacks the “cloak and dagger” thrill of the CIA related allegations, the media have not paid any attention to this action even though it may, if successful, legalise deportation to places known for their “forceful interrogation techniques”.
This is the background against which the Council of Europe launched its two-pronged inquiry into the allegations of secret detentions and rendition flights, first publicised by the US media in November:
The interim information note, presented in January by Dick Marty, the rapporteur for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, is a comprehensive compendium of the information known so far. Those criticising his report for not containing anything new are missing the point. Most of what is in the report is indeed “old”, but it is factually correct and worrisome, and it requires much more clarification than what has been offered so far by the countries concerned. The information note itself contains references to four well documented cases of extraordinary rendition, implicating at least five Council of Europe member states, namely Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, Italy, the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia and Sweden.
But the Council of Europe is not only looking into what has happened, we are also using our legal authority to ensure that what is alleged will not happen in the future. The governments of the 46 member states have until 21 February to respond to my inquiry into their compliance with legal obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. They need to explain not only which laws they have adopted to protect individuals from forced disappearances, secret detentions and extraordinary renditions to places where they can be exposed to torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, but also how they have enforced these laws since 1 January 2002:
If, after the expiration of the deadline, we find that laws applying the guarantees of the European Convention on Human Rights are not in place, or they are inadequate, or they have not been effectively enforced, we shall make sure that this will be put right. Needless to say, any failure to reply to my questions would in itself constitute a violation of the Convention.
The Council of Europe insists on full compliance with the organisation’s human rights standards because we firmly believe that this is the only way to win the fight against terrorism. Torture is not only morally wrong, it also does not make us any safer because it produces unreliable intelligence and helps to recruit new terrorists: We should unite our forces and stop the violent extremists who are set to destroy the values of our modern societies and create dictatorships in which people could be arrested at whim, kept in secret prisons, tortured, tried in kangaroo courts and executed as a result. Surely we all agree that this is not a world we would want to live in.

Terry Davis is the Secretary General of the Council of Europe