EU Rendition Report

More screeching with no evidence. Anti-Americanism, you bet.

STRASBOURG, France: A yearlong European parliamentary investigation into CIA flights transporting terror suspects to secret prisons has yielded a report singling out Britain, Germany and other European heavyweights as colluding with the U.S. secret detention program in an apparent breach of human rights standards.

Now the European Parliament faces a much tougher task — forcing the governments to respond to the report, which human rights activists said may have exposed just the tip of the iceberg.

The 76-page report approved Wednesday put the spotlight on the liberties some EU nations have taken in helping the U.S. war on terror, but also exposed the limits of the EU legislature, which has no legal powers over the issue and few means to enforce change in the member states' attitude towards the CIA program.

Best of all:

In all, the parliamentarians dealt with 19 kidnappings of terror suspects either from European soil or with participation of an EU government. They heard dozens of hours of testimony from the victims of extraordinary renditions, their lawyers or representatives, got testimony from senior EU officials and flight data from the EU air traffic agency. The report offers circumstantial evidence indicating terror suspects were on some of the secret CIA flights.

Yep, nothing solid, just circumstantial evidence. Nice politics. Looks like politicians are the same irrespective of their lineage. I love that they can't enforce any of the resolutions. The EU parliament is kind of like a localized UN. And it looks like they have the benefit of gridlock themselves.

A threat of sanctions against EU nations found to have violated civil liberties by housing a secret jail or helping to secretly transfer terror suspects to countries where they could face torture was dropped in the final version of the report, after it was found impossible to push through. But the legislators demanded proper inquiries in the 14 EU countries implicated in the report. Some of the nations have launched or completed investigations into CIA activities.

No EU governments have admitted that the alleged anti-terror operations were carried out on their soil. Human Rights Watch identified Poland and Romania as possible locations of secret prisons on European territory, but both countries denied involvement.

Human Rights Watch shooting from the hip. Wonder where they get their circumstantial evidence.