BBC News top story this morning, Europe ‘aided US in CIA flights’:
Fourteen European states colluded with the CIA in secret US flights for terror suspects, a report concludes.
The report comes from Europe’s human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe.The report says there is evidence to back suspicions secret prisons are or were located in Poland and Romania – allegations both countries deny.
And who heads the investigation that produced the report?
Swiss senator Dick Marty, who after a seven month inquiry still has no evidence, but the Beeb assures us that
Mr Marty has drawn on air traffic logs, satellite photos and accounts of prisoners who say they were abducted.
While the above article claims the existence of evidence, on BBCA’s TV news this morning they interviewed a representative of Amnesty International on the subject while displaying a banner under him that read “No solid evidence of secret prisons has been found“.
No matter. The Beeb’s been flogging Dick’s story for months now:
Last April the NYT reported that two investigations — including one by the Council of Europe — have uncovered not rights abuses: No Proof of Secret C.I.A. Prisons, European Antiterror Chief Says
Mr. de Vries said the European Parliament investigation had not uncovered rights abuses despite more than 50 hours of testimony by rights advocates and people who say they were abducted by C.I.A. agents. A similar investigation by the Council of Europe, the European human rights agency, came to the same conclusion in January
As I said then
Dick Marty, if the name sounds familiar, is the same guy that last year was saying the same thing, even when that arm of the vast right-wing consipracy, the NYT, put it this way,
Mr. Marty’s findings to date amount to little more than a compendium of press clippings.
Maybe the Beeb’s way ahead of the news cycle. Or maybe it’s this.
“Even if proof, in the classical meaning of the term, is not as yet available, a number of coherent and converging elements indicate that such secret detention centers did indeed exist in Europe,” he wrote, saying this warranted further investigation,
and ensuring he still has a better paying job in the long term.
More at Publius Pundit.
(Emphasis added to all articles quoted)
(technorati tags CIA, terrorism, BBC, Dick Marty)
