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The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is going to open debate on the second report by Swiss MEP Dick Marty next Wednesday. The report is on secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving EU states. You can watch the debate live on http://assembly.coe.int, where you can also watch Dick Marty's press conference due next Wednesday at 1:00 p.m.

The Marty report, an official document

The voting to come is crucial. If the report is dismissed, the document will be just a sad episode to reach the largest recycle bin available, which would relieve many. But if it is accepted (as some Strasbourg sources are convinced), there will open a new episode of a battle with several actors, on several continents and with lots of connotations.

Let's hope it won't happen. But what if it does? What will happen to the Dick Marty report? It will become an official document of the Council of Europe and the Fava Commission will take over unless the MEPs decide to appoint a different commission, with more members and attributions. There may emerge a situation very uneasy for the European Commission, more exactly for Commissioner Franco Frattini, who would have to act accordingly, that is to keep his promise and demand severe measures against the states found guilty. Both President Barroso and Commissioner Frattini outlined the measures might go up to depriving the respective state of the right to vote.

Unconvincing evidence

But is there evidence to call for such a mechanism? If the only evidence is the one already mentioned in the report text, then there are poor, very poor odds that this text should become credible grounds for accusations, pertinent for European or international courts, even if the Parliamentary Assembly passes it. In such case, why would the Council of Europe risk losing institutional credibility?

The key to this consists in the complexity of answers to this question. If Dick Marty has got only the proves already in the report, then his only chance to go on is on the one hand the media keenness on a juicy issue, endowed with obvious political connotations, agreeable for an international public growing more and more determined against the US. On the other hand, he knows he can rely on full support from the organizations that fetched him many of the allegations included in his successive reports, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch among them. But there are sources claiming Marty has got more evidence he treats as strictly confidential and which he would like to unveil either to the special committee of the Parliament of Europe or to the EU Council of Ministers. Or this is just one more story in the misinformation he launched on the market or he keeps it for a third report...

Some help

What is certain is that Romanians officials gave him a hand. Maybe you can still remember what Mr. Corneliu Vadim Tudor, a vice president of the Romanian Senate, said: that he personally gave Ren van der Linden, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a record with relevant proves on CIA illegal flights. There were also the very ambiguous statements of Mr. senator Frunda, registered as evidence of guilt in the Marty report. And there is one last possibility, the most cynical and maybe the closest to political playing: by incriminating only Romania and Poland they will be trying to burden the weakest in the game with the common European responsibility. What will the 20 Romanian MPs who take trips to Brussels at Romanians' expense say to prevent Romania from being unjustly accused once again?

Articol disponibil la adresa http://www.ziua.net/display.php?id=222870&data=2007-06-25