BERLIN, Jan. 24 -- A European human rights investigator on Tuesday accused the United States of "unacceptable and appalling" tactics in the fight against terrorism but said he was unable to independently confirm reports of secret prisons run by the CIA in Eastern Europe.
In an interim report presented to the Council of Europe, the continent's official human rights watchdog group, Dick Marty, a Swiss parliamentarian, also accused European governments of either collaborating or looking the other way as U.S. intelligence officers abducted or secretly detained terrorism suspects on European soil.
"We can say that there is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of 'relocation' or 'outsourcing' of torture," he wrote in his report, the product of a two-month investigation. "Europe must clearly and unambiguously declare that it refuses outright to tolerate such doings in its territory, or anywhere else."
Marty has only limited powers to compel individuals and governments to cooperate. His report offered no fresh evidence to support his allegations, and he relied primarily on media reports and previously documented cases to draw his conclusions. In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack dismissed the findings as the "same old reports wrapped up in some new rhetoric."
The Council of Europe commissioned the investigation after The Washington Post reported in November that the CIA had operated secret prisons for high-level al Qaeda figures in Eastern Europe since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Post has not published the names of the East European countries involved in the covert program at the request of senior U.S. officials, who argued that it could disrupt counterterrorism efforts and make those nations a target for terrorists.
Marty said he could not find any "formal, irrefutable evidence" of CIA detention centers in Eastern Europe. He said he had recently obtained satellite data and flight logs from European agencies that could offer clues, however, and cited other "reliable" sources that justified his ongoing investigation.
"I know it will be a long and difficult path," he said in a telephone interview from Council of Europe headquarters in Strasbourg, France, when asked if he expected to find concrete answers. "But as far as the truth is concerned, I am fundamentally optimistic."
Marty criticized European governments as being less than candid about their role in or knowledge of U.S. counterterrorism operations on the continent. U.S. officials have said they routinely notify or partner with allied intelligence agencies when conducting such missions.
In London, British officials have fended off accusations that they allowed the CIA to use British airspace and military bases to carry out operations known as "extraordinary renditions," the abduction of terrorist suspects who are then handed over to other countries for interrogation.
On Monday, Prime Minister Tony Blair said the British government had been "extremely open" about renditions and had received no recent requests from the United States for the use of British airspace. The government has previously said it had received U.S. requests dating before Sept. 11, 2001, but none since then.
But a Foreign Office memo written in early December and published by the New Statesman magazine in the issue dated Jan. 23 suggested that the government was not being entirely forthcoming. It advised British officials to "try to avoid getting drawn on detail" about the debate. Citing two renditions that occurred in 1998, the memo said, "The papers we have unearthed so far suggest there could be more such cases."
Correspondent Mary Jordan in London, staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington and special correspondent Shannon Smiley in Berlin contributed to this report.
CIA seal.
The Council of Europe is pressing member governments to provide information concerning CIA prisons operating secretly in Europe.
 
In an interim report by the human rights council rapporteur, Swiss senator Dick Marty made public the 42-member nation's preliminary conclusions regarding CIA activity on European Union soil. 

Marty reported, "Individuals have been abducted, deprived of their liberty and transported to different destinations in Europe, to be handed over to countries in which they have suffered degrading treatment and torture." The report estimates the rendition of "more than a hundred persons." 

But when it comes right down to it, no irrefutable evidence exists to confirm allegations that the CIA operated secret detention centers in Europe. "There is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of 'relocation' or 'outsourcing of torture'," the report stated while further noting that, "It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware."

"Our aim is to find out the truth that is being hidden from us today", he said. He adds that he is afraid of "the pressure put on the media in the United States not to report on this affair."

A researcher for Human Rights Watch, John Swift, said; "Cooperation is going to be needed if this investigation is going to succeed. European governments are at a crossroads. They can decide to cooperate with this investigation and uphold European traditions of human rights, or they can continue their romance with the CIA. But they can't do both."

The report has also been criticized for appearing to lack new content and to be incomplete. Former minister for Europe and British member of parliament Denis MacShane has said that Marty's report "has more holes than a Swiss cheese." US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack has rejected the report and stated that it was an example of the "same old reports wrapped up in some new rhetoric. There's nothing new here." 

US Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff has stated regarding the US government that "the government acts in accordance with the law and with respect to the sovereignty of host countries in which it operates," and further stated that "The authorities are free to investigate what they want to investigate but we should not allow ourselves to be distracted from the need to identify, prevent and protect against terrorist acts of violence."

The group Amnesty International USA is calling for the US Congress to create a commission to investigate detention and interrogation practices. The United States neither confirms nor denies the existence of secret detention centers.