Panel decries terrorism blacklist process by EU, UN

“The fight against terrorism is a need that nobody can put into question,” said the panel, which is part of the 47-nation council, Europe’s leading human rights watchdog organisation. ”

In a draft resolution to be considered by another council body, the committee said: “If one adds to this picture the practice of abductions (‘extraordinary renditions’), of secret detention centres and the trivialisation of torture, this provides a worrying, devastating message — principles that are as fundamental as the rule of law and the protection of human rights are optional accessories applicable only in fair weather.”

A report by the council last summer said the CIA exploited NATO military agreements to help it run secret prisons in Poland and Romania, where the report said alleged terrorists were held in solitary confinement for months, shackled and subjected to other mental and physical torture.

Poland and Romania have both denied that the CIA established such prisons on their soil.

The resolution approved by the Legal Affairs Committee is scheduled to be debated by the council’s Parliamentary Assembly in January. The council’s actions serve as recommendations to members of the 27-nation EU.

About 370 individuals and 60 organisations worldwide have been blacklisted by the UN Security Council or the EU, the investigation found. In addition to the freeze on their finances and the prohibition on travel, they have little recourse for getting delisted, according to Dick Marty, a Swiss legislator who led the investigation. Marty also headed the council’s probe of secret prisons.

“The person or group concerned is usually neither informed of the request, nor given the possibility to be heard, nor even necessarily informed about the decision taken, until he or she first attempts to cross a border or use a bank account,” Marty wrote in his account for the committee.

“A serial killer in Europe has a lot more rights,” Marty said at a news conference in Paris after the parliamentary committee met in the French city of Strasbourg.

“How can one today justify as part of the fight against terrorism the blacklisting for more than six years of a man … against whom the law enforcement authorities of two countries have not found a shred of evidence of any wrongdoing?” Marty said in his report.

Both the UN and the EU have relaxed some of the secrecy surrounding the blacklists in recent years, the committee said. The EU issued a new regulation, allowing those who are blacklisted to receive a letter of notification and information on how to appeal the listing.