'Hundreds of CIA-chartered flights have passed through numerous European countries. It is highly unl

Dick Marty has produced an interim report on allegations of CIA rendition flights and secret prisons in Europe. Now the Irish Government – and their European counterparts – have detailed questions to answer. Colin Murphy reports

The Council of Europe's latest report on CIA renditions and alleged secret prisons concludes that it is "highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware" of rendition flights passing through their territories.

"'Rendition' affecting Europe seems to have concerned more than a hundred persons in recent years. Hundreds of CIA-chartered flights have passed through numerous European countries", it says.

The report, by Swiss senator Dick Marty, finds "there is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of 'relocation' or 'outsourcing' of torture" operated by the CIA.

Dick Marty notes that "numerous aircraft chartered by the CIA allegedly flew over, to and from European territory (benefiting, therefore, from airport facilities in Council of Europe member states) in order to transport suspects, completely illegally, to these secret centres".

Presenting the report, Marty said: "We are representing civil society here. Our aim is not to place the blame; it is far simpler and nobler than that. It is to find out the truth that is being hidden from us today."

The report was presented by Dick Marty at a debate of the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly in Strasbourg on 24 January.

The sole mention of Ireland in the report comes in a brief paragraph (no 38) in the section detailing investigations in European states. According to Marty, "the head of the Irish delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly (Fianna Fail TD Noel Davern) informed me of the many questions to the government in the Irish Parliament, and of the replies received. In substance, the government expressed total condemnation of the practice of 'extraordinary renditions' and stated that it had never authorised any overflights of Irish territory by chartered aircraft for that purpose".

Dick Marty's interim report is based primarily upon media and public reports and his contacts with journalists, politicians and prosecutors who have investigated renditions and alleged secret prisons. The lack of information in the report on Ireland is an indication of the lack of debate or investigation here. The Government's replies to queries on rendition flights thus far have been stock responses: that they are not aware of any prisoners being illegally transported through Ireland, and that the US has given them assurances that it has not, and would not transport prisoners through Ireland without permission.

Our investigations (corroborated by later reports elsewhere) established that aircraft being operated by the CIA had used Shannon on numerous occasions, in particular on two identified occasions when returning to the US from rendition missions. We further established that the aircraft in question had been logged as making "technical stops" at Shannon, for which they were not required to request permission from the Department of Transport. Requests under the Freedom of Information Acts for details of correspondence between the US and Ireland related to the issue (and related internal documentation) have been refused under section 24.2.b, which exempts communications between governments.

The decision of the Seanad to conduct an inquiry, and the Government's answers to questions put to it by Marty (see over), may force further information into the public domain.

Dick Marty's report examines in detail the abduction of an Egyptian citizen, Abu Omar, in Milan, Italy, in June 2003, by the CIA, and his "rendition" to Egypt. As we first revealed, the aircraft on which Abu Omar was flown by the CIA to Egypt returned to the US the following day via Shannon.

Marty writes: "Abu Omar's abduction is a perfect illustration of 'extraordinary rendition'. It is a clear indication that the method exists, together with complex logistic support in various parts of Europe and considerable deployment of personnel. It also plants doubts and raises the question of involvement of national authorities at one or other level.

"The Italian judicial investigation established, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the operation was carried out by the CIA (which has not issued any denials)."

The investigation by the Milan judiciary and police was "outstanding and tenacious", he finds.

The rendition of Abu Omar occurred as follows (as reported by Marty, and previously reported here):

•At midday on 17 June 2003, Hassam Osama Mustafa Nasr, known as Abu Omar, was abducted in the middle of Milan.

•Via the military airbases at Aviano (Italy) and Ramstein (Germany) Abu Omar was flown to Egypt, on a Gulfstream jet which later flew to the US via Shannon. In Egypt, Omar was tortured before being released and re-arrested. His whereabouts are currently unknown.

•No proceedings were brought against Omar in Egypt (according to Dick Marty).

•The proceedings instituted in Milan are concerned with 25 American agents, against 22 of whom the Italian authorities have issued arrest warrants.

•Abu Omar was a political refugee. Suspected of Islamic militancy, he had been under surveillance by the Milan police and judicial authorities. As a result of the surveillance operation, the Italian police were probably on the point of uncovering an activist network operating in northern Italy. Abu Omar's abduction, as the Milan judicial authorities expressly point out, sabotaged the Italian surveillance operation and thereby dealt a blow to antiterrorist action.

While this interim report finds there is as yet "no formal, irrefutable evidence of the existence of secret CIA detention centres in Romania, Poland or any other country", Marty reports that information revealed on secret prisons by separate outlets, the Washington Post, Human Rights Watch and ABC came from different sources, which "adds to the credibility of the allegations".

He also noted it had not been denied by either the director of the CIA, Porter Goss, or the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, in recent interviews, though both had denied that the US used torture in interrogations.

Following pressure from the US government, the Washington Post did not mention any of the countries allegedly hosting secret prisons by name. Human Rights Watch identified Poland and Romania, and ABC subsequently reported that prisons in these countries had since been closed. (The ABC article was removed from their website shortly after publication.) According to Dick Marty, further information has identified Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo and Ukraine as the sites of prisons – this information came in a fax from the Egyptian Ministry of European Affairs to the Egyptian Embassy in London, which intercepted by the Swiss intelligence services.

In a question that appears to follow in particular from recent revelations that British government officials approved of the use of information obtained under torture in Uzbekistan and subsequently passed on to it by the Uzbek government, Dick Marty asks whether it is "enough for one's own secret services not to be physically present at the place of interrogation and to pretend to have no official knowledge of this practice to state that the law is not being broken".

On the issue of airport facilities being provided to CIA rendition flights (as has happened in Ireland, though allegedly without prisoners on board), he asks: "What is, therefore, the share of responsibility of member states when their airport facilities are used to transport detainees to places where they will be subjected to torture, ie places – dare I say – of public notoriety?"

In an annex to the report, he details questions (below) which have been provided to national parliaments across Europe, including Ireland, to be asked of the government.

The report is critical of the response of the media, politicians and public generally to the allegations – and verified reports – of renditions taking place in and through Europe.

"In countries that pride themselves in being long-standing democracies that protect human rights, the revelation of these allegations should have sparked off reactions and categorical condemnation several months ago, and yet this was not the case, with a few exceptions."

This was evident in Ireland with the lack of any significant response in the leading newspapers and RTÉ to investigations by Village and other media into renditions and the use of Shannon.

Dick Marty says he was "particularly struck by the fact that it is in the United States that the discussions first really took off", following the reports by the Washington Post and Human Rights Watch last November. In response to these reports, the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, undertook a whirlwind tour of European capitals early in December, which had the effect of making the renditions story "mainstream". RTÉ, followed by the Irish Times, reported that it had received information under the Freedom of Information Acts on the use of Shannon by aircraft used by the CIA - information which had been reported in Village months earlier.

Dick Marty's investigation on behalf of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe is ongoing

?More: The full report is available at www.coe.int