The 67-page report from Council of Europe (COE), issued on June 7 2006, openly admits that it can't present hard proof due to a lack of "any real investigatory powers". However, it preemptively hits back by accusing EU governments of passivity: "The total absence of serious inquiries by the national authorities concerned, implies, in my view, the reversal of the burden of proof."
On this basis the Swiss COR rapporteur Dick Marty contends that a network of airports were available for CIA prisoner flights, and that it was "only through the intentional or grossly negligent collusion of the European partners that the 'web' was able to spread over Europe."
The report also maintain that there is circumstantial evidence to back the allegation that Romania and Poland harbored secret C.I.A. detention centres.
Romania reacted with a strong denial calling it "pure speculation." Poland's Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz called the accusations "slanderous" and "not based on facts." UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said the report "added absolutely nothing new whatever to the information we have". A German government spokesman, however, promised a " thorough testing" of the reports allegations.
US White House press secretary, Tony Snow, said: "We will not agree to send anybody to a nation or place that practices torture. International cooperation in the war on terror is essential for winning, and rendition is not something that began with this administration, and it's certainly going to be practiced, I'm sure, in the future."
The COE report said that Spain, Turkey, Germany and Cyprus acted as 'staging posts', where rendition operations were begun. UK, Portugal, Ireland and Greece were 'stopover points', where planes landed to refuel. It concludes that Italy, Sweden, Macedonia and Bosnia allowed the abduction of residents from their soil.
