Centre-right MEPs demand more changes to CIA report

Centre-right MEPs said they would continue to seek changes to a Parliamentary report passed this week by the committee investigating CIA activity which criticises 13 member states’ involvement.

Before the Parliament’s plenary session votes on the report on 14 February, MEPs will try to soften language which states that torture, abductions and rendition flights took place.

But MEPs from both the centre-right groups and the Socialist group succeeded during Tuesday’s (23 January) vote in removing references to the likelihood of a secret detention centre in Poland. "It is not possible to acknowledge that secret detention centres were based in Poland," the revised version states.

Some MEPs criticised the voting pattern of members whose parties were in government or had been when the illegal activity took place. UK MEPs from the Labour Party voted with opposition Conservative deputies to drop an amendment deploring "the way in which the UK government, as represented by its minister for Europe, co-operated with the temporary committee".

"Does [British Conservative party leader] David Cameron really want his MEPs to be proposing such an amendment?" said UK Liberal MEP Sarah Ludford.

"The Socialist group in particular was prepared to criticise every government but their own," said Spanish Liberal MEP Ignasi Guardans Cambó.

"There are people who turned a blind eye to principles and values across the spectrum and people who voted according to their conscience," said Portuguese Socialist MEP Ana Gomes.

But while parts of the report where governments were criticised were changed, the amended version now states more clearly the case for examining the human rights violations by member states and the need for possible sanctions, as laid down in articles 6 and 7 of the EU treaty. "We are asking the Council and Commission to take our report. We want them to analyse our evidence, our facts and possibly use article 6 and 7," said Italian Socialist MEP Claudio Fava, the report’s author. If the European Commission and the Council of Ministers do not act, the report states that the Parliament’s civil liberties committee should.

Criticism of the evidence given by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Gijs de Vries, the EU’s counter-terrorism co-ordinator, remained in the report, especially in light of documents leaked to the committee which showed issues discussed between them and US officials.

Despite comments by Jas Gawronski, the leader of the centre-right EPP-ED group in the committee, that it was "a totally useless report", two of the groups’ MEPs (Portuguese MEP Carlos Coelho, the committee chairman, and Belgian MEP Frieda Brepoels) voted in favour of the report, while three abstained. The amended report was carried by 28 votes to 17, with three abstentions.

Centre-right MEPs said they would continue to seek changes to a Parliamentary report passed this week by the committee investigating CIA activity which criticises 13 member states’ involvement.