LONDON, June 7: European governments collaborated with the United States in the ‘extraordinary rendition’ of security suspects while two secret prisons were or are located in eastern Europe, British media said.

The BBC made the claims late on Tuesday while The Guardian carried a similar report in its Wednesday edition.

Both said they had seen an advanced copy of Swiss lawmaker Dick Marty’s report into the matter for the Council of Europe.

The report is said to implicate 14 European governments in the practice, which involves the transfer of security suspects to a third country for questioning. Human rights groups have criticised the process for exposing detainees to the risk of torture.

According to the news reports, Marty is said to have concluded that the ‘spider’s web’ of US rendition flights that have criss-crossed Europe is based on an ‘utterly alien’ legal approach that breaches human rights law.

He is said to reserve his main condemnation for the United States for attempting to ‘develop new legal concepts’ when “neither conventional judicial instruments nor those established under the framework of the laws of war could effectively counter the new forms of international terrorism”.

But far from being carried out without the knowledge of European governments, it was done with ‘the intentional or grossly negligent collusion of the European partners’, according to the extracts in The Guardian.

The newspaper also quoted Marty as saying: “Whilst hard evidence, at least according to the strict meaning of the word, is still not forthcoming, a number of coherent and converging elements indicate that secret detention centres have indeed existed and unlawful inter-state transfers have taken place in Europe.”

He is said to add: “It is now clear — although we are still far from having established the truth — that authorities in several European countries actively participated with the CIA in these unlawful activities. Other countries ignored them knowingly, or did not want to know.”

Countries like Spain, Turkey, Germany and Cyprus provided ‘staging posts’ for rendition operations, while Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Britain were stop-off points for US Central Intelligence Agency flights, the report added. Britain is also accused of passing on information to the CIA about its citizens or residents, who then face rendition and/or torture.

One highlighted case is that of a London student who was allegedly ill-treated in Moroccan custody, where he was taken after his arrest in Pakistan.

Prisoners have also been captured for rendition in Italy, Sweden, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, according to the report.

Macedonia is said to be accused of covering up its involvement in the rendition of a German national to Afghanistan in January 2004.

But Marty’s most serious charges are said to be against Poland and Romania, where there is now reportedly enough concrete evidence to support suspicions that the governments there allowed CIA secret prisons on their soil.—AFP