24 April 2006

BRUSSELS - Human rights activists from Bosnia and Herzegovina are expected to tell European Union lawmakers on Tuesday that the US used European airports for transporting terror suspects to Guantanamo Bay.

European Parliament sources told DPA that a lawyer for six citizens and former residents of Bosnia and Herzegovina, currently being held in Guantanamo, is set to tell the EU assembly that he has official documents from Washington proving that the US secret service used air bases in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany and Turkey to take the terror suspects to Cuba.

The six detainees, who are of Algerian origin, were taken from Bosnia to Guantanamo in January 2002. At least one of the aircraft flew from a US military airbase in Germany, the lawyer is expected to tell a European Parliament special committee investigating charges against the CIA.

He is also expected to say that the planes made a stop-over at a military base in Turkey.

The parliamentary body investigating the CIA charges was set up in January. Italian Socialist MEP Claudio Fava, rapporteur for the 46- member committee, will present its first findings in an interim report expected to be released Wednesday.

A delegation of parliamentarians will travel to Macedonia later in the week to query senior government officials about what they knew about alleged CIA secret jails and clandestine flights in their country.

Euro MPs intend to hold talks with President Branko Crvenkovski, Deputy Prime Minister Radmila Sekerinska, Interior Minister Ljubomir Mihailovski as well as with officials of the Macedonian security service.

The Parliament's committee is working in tandem with an inquiry by the Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights watchdog. However, the committee has no power to sanction European governments.

DPA

Subject: German news