STRASBOURG, Jan 24: The United States flew detainees to countries where they would be tortured and European governments probably knew about it, the head of a European human rights investigation said on Tuesday.

But Swiss senator Dick Marty said in a preliminary report for the Council of Europe human rights watchdog that he had found no irrefutable evidence to confirm allegations that the CIA operated secret detention centres in Europe.

His report kept pressure on the US Central Intelligence Agency over the allegations that it flew prisoners through European airports to jails in third countries, but critics said it was flawed and contained nothing new.

“There is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of ‘relocation’ or ‘outsourcing of torture’,” Marty told the 46-nation Council, based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg.

“It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware.”

The Sept 11, 2001, attacks on US landmarks sparked a US global war on terrorism against al Qaeda and led to the invasion of Iraq. Public opinion has hardened in Europe since deadly bomb attacks in London last July and in Madrid in March, 2004.

But the allegations about the CIA, first made by newspapers and human rights groups late last year, have put pressure on the United States and European governments to explain their actions and those of their secret services.

Marty said it had been proved that “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.”

He estimated that more than 100 people had been involved in “renditions” — delivering prisoners to jails in third countries, where they may have been mistreated or tortured.

NO ‘SMOKING GUN’: Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria have faced accusations that the CIA secretly used detention centres on their soil. Marty has accused European states of turning a blind eye to the “dirty work”.