End rendition and secret detention: Europe’s duty

European states have been implicated in the US-led rendition and secret detention programme, in which people have been unlawfully detained and transferred from one country to another outside of any judicial process.

Some have been transferred from US custody to countries where torture and other ill-treatment is known to accompany interrogation; others have been transferred into US custody and subsequently held in detention centres in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

A number of individuals have been subjected to enforced disappearance, including in secret CIA detention, and the whereabouts of some three dozen people remain unknown. Every one of the victims of rendition interviewed by Amnesty International has said they were tortured or otherwise ill-treated in custody.

Investigations by the Council of Europe and the European Parliament have recommended that Member States take measures to prevent such human rights violations occurring in the future and to ensure redress, including reparation, to the victims.

These recommendations have not been implemented to date.