CIA tried to silence EU on torture flights

The CIA tried to persuade Germany to silence European Union (EU) protests about the human rights record of one of the US's key allies in its clandestine torture flights program. According to a secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access to one of its citizens, an al-Qaida suspect being held in a Moroccan cell. But the US secret agents demanded that in return, Berlin should cooperate and "avert pressure from [the] EU" over human rights abuses in the north African country. The report describes Morocco as a "valuable partner in the fight against terrorism." After the CIA offered a deal to Germany, EU countries adopted an almost universal policy of downplaying criticism of human rights records in countries where terrorist suspects have been held. They have also sidestepped questions about secret CIA flights partly because of growing evidence of their complicity. The disclosure is among fresh revelations about how the CIA flew terrorist suspects to locations where they were tortured. They are contained in Ghost Plane, by Stephen Grey, the journalist who first revealed details of secret CIA flights one year ago. Grey plans to publish more than 3,000 logs of the CIA flights on the internet this week. CIA pilots, sometimes using false identities, ran up huge bills in luxury hotels after flying terrorist suspects to secret locations where they were tortured. But they revealed their whereabouts and identities by indiscreet use of mobile phones and allowed outsiders to track their aircraft's flights. When the controversy broke, Germany claimed it only knew about the torture sites through the media. But now the German government is also alleged to have received first-hand evidence that the CIA began torturing terrorist suspects at secret prisons in Europe shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Stern magazine quoted a leaked German intelligence report on Oct. 24 which said that only weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, two agents and a translator visited a US military prison at the US "Eagle Base" in the Bosnian town of Tuzla, where they saw a torture victim. The German intelligence report said US interrogators at the base had beaten a 70-year-old terrorist suspect with rifle butts and that "his injuries meant that he had to be given 20 stitches to the head wound he sustained." The report said the US interrogator responsible "appeared to be proud" of his actions. Stern said the German intelligence agents had been given access to documents confiscated by the US which were "smeared with blood." One German agent was said to have compared the actions of the US interrogators to Serbian war criminals during the break-up of Yugoslavia. "The Serbs ended up before the international court in The Hague for this kind of thing," he was quoted as saying. The two German agents and their translator had been asked to appear at the base to help the US interrogate suspects and help evaluate confiscated material. But according to the leaked report, they immediately informed Germany's federal prosecutor of what they had witnessed and left the base shortly afterwards.