Europe honors HRW for exposing CIA jails

NEW YORK, June 29 (UPI) -- A U.S. human rights group was honored this week by a European parliamentary body for its work in exposing CIA secret prisons.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg Wednesday gave an award to the New York-based Human Rights Watch for "helping to lift the veil of secrecy in the investigation into alleged secret detentions and illegal transfers of prisoners."

HRW noted in a statement that the award was "the first of its kind."

The award was given as PACE continued to discuss U.S. secret prisons in Europe as part of the war on terror. The PACE debate was "based on the report released in June 2007 by Swiss Sen. Dick Marty which confirms allegations first made by Human Rights Watch in 2005 that locations in Poland and Romania were among sites used by the CIA for secret prisons," HRW said.

"Dick Marty's report confirms that Poland and Romania helped the CIA run secret prisons and that European governments allowed the CIA to move ghost prisoners across their territory," said Reed Brody, special counsel at Human Rights Watch. "The U.S. and European governments should accept responsibility and take steps to ensure such illegal operations never happen again."

Human Rights Watch said that in cooperation with five other human rights groups it had "recently published a list of 39 people believed to have been held in secret U.S. custody and whose current whereabouts are unknown.

Widespread criticism in Europe of U.S. secret operations to capture and detain terror suspects continues to dampen attitudes about the United States. But the U.S. government says such operations are essential to defend both the United States and the nations of the European Union from terrorist attacks.