Government defends stance on CIA prisons

swissinfo | January 15 2006

One week after media revelations the Swiss authorities allegedly knew of the existence of secret CIA prisons in Europe, three ministers have spoken out.

They have rejected criticism from the Council of Europe's investigator that they and other European governments have failed to tackle the White House over the issue.

Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey told the NZZ am Sonntag on Sunday that the information contained in a secret document published last week by the SonntagsBlick tabloid was not spectacular.

The document was a leaked report about an Egyptian fax intercepted by the Swiss intelligence services that claimed that the Americans were operating a secret prison in Romania to interrogate suspected terrorists. The Egyptians also allegedly had proof of detention centres in other parts of eastern Europe.

Calmy-Rey said the report showed that the secret services had informed the authorities correctly. For the foreign minister, the real problem was that the document had been made public and that the leak had damaged the Swiss government's credibility.

The foreign ministry has spent the last week carrying out damage control, patching up its relationships with Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Kosovo and the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. These countries and regions were all specifically named in the secret report.

"The countries whose names were revealed weren't particularly happy," Calmy-Rey told the Matin Dimanche newspaper.

Passive

She also defended the government against accusations it had remained too passive in the CIA prisons' affair.

On Friday, the Swiss senator heading a European investigation into the CIA prisons, Dick Marty, said United States anti-terror policies contravened human rights law. He claimed that Switzerland and other European nations were being too passive towards such policies.

Marty said that European countries had been "complicit" in the CIA's alleged activities. "What was shocking was the passivity with which we all, in Europe, have welcomed these things," he added.

For the Social Democrat foreign minister, there has still been no proof of the existence of the prisons though, contrary to Marty's claims. "[Given the situation,] we have done all we can," she told the NZZ.

The Swiss authorities have demanded – unsuccessfully – for explanations from the Americans according to Calmy-Rey, who added that Switzerland has repeated its request a number of times in no uncertain fashion and will continue to do so.

Holy See

The Swiss finance minister, Hans-Rudolf Merz, and the interior minister, Pascal Minister, took time out on Saturday to criticise their Radical Party colleague Marty.

For Couchepin, the government must ensure good relations with other countries, including the United States.

"I don't think Switzerland is the moral guardian of the world," he told Swiss public radio. "Switzerland defends moral principles, but we aren't the Holy See for human rights."

Merz reckoned that Marty had information that the government had no knowledge of to make his claims. The finance minister said the government could not speak out in the same way since it had too little facts available until now.

The results of a poll published on Sunday by the SonntagsBlick show that three out of four Swiss believe that the government should make a formal protest to the US authorities about the CIA prisons.

Only 20 per cent of those surveyed agreed with the government's position so far.

The poll also reveals that two-thirds of the Swiss believe that the authorities should have passed on any secret information they had to Marty. Nearly 85 per cent of those surveyed reject as well the use of torture in the fight against terrorism.

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