US was 'outsourcing torture'

STRASBOURG, France - A Swiss investigator said yesterday there was evidence of "outsourcing of torture" by the United States but he had not uncovered any irrefutable evidence that the CIA-operated secret prisons in Europe.

Dick Marty, a Swiss senator investigating the charges for the Council of Europe human rights watchdog, said it was "highly unlikely" that European governments were unaware of the abduction and transfer of prisoners.

There was "a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of 'relocation' or 'outsourcing of torture'," Marty said in a preliminary report prepared for the 46-nation body in Strasbourg in eastern France.

"No cogent evidence has yet emerged on the existence in Europe of detention camps like the one at Guantanamo Bay," he added, referring to the controversial US military detention centre in Cuba.

The initial findings were serious enough to warrant further investigation, he said.

"On the other hand, it has been proved - and in fact never denied - that individuals have been abducted, deprived of their liberty and transported to different destinations in Europe, to be handed over to countries in which they have suffered degrading treatment and torture," he said.

"It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware."

The US Central Intelligence Agency is alleged to have operated a secret network of jails in Europe, covertly flying prisoners through airports on the continent in CIA planes.

The US government has neither denied nor confirmed the reports of secret detention centres, first made in the Washington Post in November.

- REUTERS