Europeans complicit in CIA torture should be held accountable — Amnesty International

LONDON, January 20. /TASS/. European governments that were complicit in the CIA prison torture “must act urgently to bring those responsible to justice,” Amnesty International said in a new briefing paper on Tuesday.

The publication of the US Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture in early December exposed the European countries’ complicity in the crimes of the US intelligence.

Secret sites are believed to have existed in Lithuania, Poland and Romania, while other governments including in Germany, the United Kingdom and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia allegedly facilitated these operations.

“In some cases, these governments colluded with the CIA in exchange for millions of US dollars,” the London-based human rights organization said.

Amnesty International’s expert on counter-terrorism and human rights, Julia Hall, said without the European help, the United States “would not have been able to secretly detain and torture people for so many years.”

“The Senate report makes it abundantly clear that foreign governments were essential to the ‘success’ of the CIA operations - and evidence that has been mounting for nearly a decade points to key European allies,” she said.

The 528-page Senate report detailed the CIA use of torture during the interrogation of terrorism suspects in the years following the 9/11 attacks on the US. The techniques used against the detainees described in the report include sleep deprivation for 180 hours, ice water baths, keeping them in rooms with loud music and walling (slamming a person against a wall), as well as rectal feeding and threatening with harming families.