BRUSSELS, July 16 (UPI) -- A European Parliament committee said EU governments did not investigate "serious human rights violations" linked to a CIA program after the 2001 terror attacks.
The EU Parliament's Justice and Civil Liberties committee backed a report by Helene Flautre, a French Green member of European Parliament, by a 50-2 vote with five abstentions, the EUobserver.com reported.
The administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush started the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, in which terror suspects were transferred by plane to secret detention centers, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. As part of the program, more than 1,000 CIA flights are estimated to have used European airspace from 2001 to 2005.
The EUobserver said Germany, Sweden, Spain, Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, Denmark, Romania, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Britain have faced allegations of involvement in extraordinary renditions and secret detention centers used by the CIA.
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Flautre criticized EU governments for "not properly [fulfilling] their obligation under international law to investigate serious human rights violations connected with the CIA program."
EU Parliament members say the European Commission and European Council, which represents member states, did not take action to determine member states' involvement.
"Despite a huge amount of evidence on illegal detention and rendition most national governments have failed to follow up and there has been a kind of omerta in [the] council on it," a spokesman for the Green group said.
The EUobserver said the report, which followed by five years a report by the assembly's temporary committee on extraordinary renditions, revealed new evidence of human rights violations and showed EU governments' complicity with the CIA.
