MEPs vote on the consequences of CIA torture activities and the involvement of some EU Member States. But some say it’s not all black and white.

US torture report: the next steps for Europe

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/11965769/n003-0337-en.srt

MEPs are voting this Wednesday  on their response

to a report by the veteran American  Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein

on the CIA's use of various torture  techniques after the 9/11 attacks.

Big issues of fundamental  and human rights

as well as the complicity of  several European states

in rendering terrorism suspects  have surfaced.

To discuss them, we brought together  Charles Tannock

from the European Conservatives  and Reformists Group from the UK,

What, for you,  is the worst aspect of this report?

The worst thing was seeing the terrible  interrogation techniques that were used,

Mrs Feinstein admits that torture was used,

and she says something  that it is important to understand:

that could not have been obtained  using other means.

The American Congress, and Senate, have  basically exercised their right of scrutiny

and they have condemned the use of  enhanced interrogation techniques,

things like waterboarding,  which were allegedly permitted

by signature, executive order,  of the President at the time,

and I welcome that. I think that's an  exercise in transparency and openness

and Americans getting  their own house in order

in terms of fundamental tenets of  human rights and democracy.

But I won't go down the line  of some Members of this House,

who want to go on a sort of witch hunt  against Americans, bashing the US.

What, in Europe, should the next steps be

given the complicity of several  Member States in the CIA's activities?

There are inquiries to be held in the  countries that had detention centres,

They were centres of torture  on European soil.

And obviously there were people in these  countries conducting these interrogations.

So now it's important to hold inquiries  and to bring them to account.

for their own judicial systems,  national parliaments.

Some of them are actually setting up  committees of inquiry

to look into the role of their governments  and their cooperation with the CIA

and whether or not  criminal laws were broken

in the methods they used to render  some of these individuals

from their territory  to Arab countries,

or to carry out interrogation techniques  deemed to be illegal on their own territories.

I really don't think that the EU  has a right to muscle in

and, as it were, criticise Member States.

Is there any justification at all  for coercive interrogation techniques,

particularly when you  look at the rise of ISIS?

I don't think the use of torture  can be justified in any circumstances.

It's degrading for democracies  to use torture. It must not be allowed.

And it's has nothing to do with the horrors  of ISIS, or DAESH.

Those might call for a military intervention,  to fight them on their territory.

But they don't require us, on our territory,  to permit the use of methods

that are prohibited by international  conventions and national laws - wisely.

Clearly, all right-minded democratic  politicians in the EU Member States

and in the United States  will condemn the use of torture.

But clearly we have to retain the right  to interrogate terrorist suspects.

and we have a real problem now  with maybe 3,000 or more EU citizens

fighting in Syria, in Iraq,  for the Islamic State.

Some of these individuals  will come back to our countries.

They may carry out terrorist attacks  in our home countries.

The authorities must retain the right  to arrest these individuals

if they suspect them of having been part  of a terrorist organisation,

What are the big terrorist threats  in the future?

In France, there is a huge number of  factors at play:

our colonial history, the fact that  we have four million people,

descendents of people who immigrated  in France in the 60s or before,

Conditions in prisons in France  and many European countries

So we cannot simply imagine that  there are bad guys -

like Bush said,  he said they were 'bad boys' -

I think we need to take the problem  much more seriously.

We're facing an organisation  which is as totalitarian as a Nazi regime

in power in Germany in the 1930s and 40s.

This is an organisation  which has absolutely no sense of limits,

of what it can do or should do,  the way it executes prisoners,

sells women into slavery, carries out  mass rape, murders and torture etc.

Burns prisoners alive, as we saw  with the Jordanian the other day.

Thousands of people have now joined up  in this murderous psychopathic cult.