IN DEPTH - US torture report confirms Greece’s complicity in CIA interrogation program

Greece apparently permitted the use of its airspace as well as its airports to cater to the CIA’s extraordinary renditions program. The evidence for this had already surfaced in a 2006 report by the Council of Europe and a 2007 report by the European Parliament. As such, and on account of the recent release of the report in the US, the following report was featured on the PressProject and it is indeed very revealing!

The PressProject - A report released by the US Senate Intelligence Committee this week on the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme under the George W. Bush administration said  that the CIA tortured suspects at secret overseas sites, and that it also achieved nothing from it.

Citing the Senate report, The Guardian newspaper this week urged Europeans top to ‘come clean about their complicity’ .

According to the report among the 21 EU countries involved in the CIA’s unlawful activities is Greece. Details about Greece’s involvement had already surfaced in a 2012 report (pdf ) by the Open Society Foundations, now cited in the US Senate’s report. The Open Society’s report summarized material already appeared in two previous report, by the Council of Europe (2006) and the European Parliament (2007).

The Open Society report entitled  ‘Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition’ says Greece permitted the use of its airspace and airports linked to the CIA’s extraordinary renditions programme and that the European Parliament expressed its ‘serious concern about the 64 stopovers made by CIA-operated aircraft at Greek airports.”

     “On many occasions came from or were bound for countries linked with extraordinary rendition circuits and the transfer of detainees,” it said.

The report added that European Parliament ‘deplored’ these stopovers, which had been shown to have been used for the extraordinary rendition of Ahmed Agiza, Mohammed El-Zari, Bisher Al-Rawi, Jamil El-Banna, Abou Elkassim Britel, Khaled El-Masri, Binyam Mohammed, and Maher Arar.

By allowing stopovers for flights involving the unlawful transfer of detainees, the report said, Greece could be held responsible for ‘colluding’ in the extraordinary rendition programme, according to a 2006 Council of Europe report on the involvement of member states.

Although prosecutors launched an investigation into the reports that Greek intelligence agents had abducted and tortured Pakistani national s at the instigation of a British MI6 officer after the London bombings in 2005, the Foundation said that were no judicial cases or investigations in Greece ‘relating to its participation in CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations’.