A special investigator for the 46-member Council of Europe has accused 14 European countries Wednesday of facilitating alleged CIA flights and detention centers.
The Council of Europe's special investigator Dick Marty says the countries may have been involved or complicit in secret prisoner transfers known as renditions. Those countries include members of the European Union - such as Britain, Germany, Poland, Spain and Italy - along with candidates for membership, such as Turkey and Romania.
At a press conference in Paris, Marty, a senator from Switzerland, said their alleged participation may not have been at the highest governmental levels - it could have involved individual clandestine agents from particularly countries.
Nonetheless, Marty says the alleged detentions and renditions would not have been able to take place without some kind of state participation. In some cases, he says, governments simply refused to look into what was happening.
Marty offered a few specifics about what he described as a larger "spider's web" of secret detention centers and illegal transfers of people. Overall, he said, the alleged actions not only violate international law, but basic European principles of human rights and democracy.
And Marty described a form of judicial apartheid - where suspected Islamists were not accorded the same rights as other suspects and prisoners.
The U.S. State Department expressed disappointment over the Marty report and called it a "rehash" of old charges.
The accusations are detailed in a 67-page report released Wednesday by the Council of Europe as part of its ongoing investigation into alleged CIA renditions and detention centers. The European Parliament is conducting a similar investigation.
Some countries, such as Germany and Bosnia have admitted some sort of involvement, but others, including Poland and Romania, denied involvement.
