Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-14-Speech-3-118"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20051214.14.3-118"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I agree with Mr Poettering that we need to inform without prejudging the issues. The essential issue is whether institutions of the European Union or of its Member States were involved – whether actively or passively – in setting up prisons outside the law and in the use in them of methods of interrogation that have to be described as torture.
Both prisons operating outside the law and the use of torture for the purposes of interrogation would constitute breaches of the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, of the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Convention and of the Convention against Torture ratified by all Member States of the European Union and by all candidates for accession to it.
I do wholeheartedly agree with Commissioner Frattini, though, that it is not the task of the European Parliament to investigate any one Member State or candidate country; what matters instead is that we get a picture of how things stand in Europe as a whole. The best place in which to do that is this House.
If, though, we set this inquiry in motion, we cannot do so in isolation from the experience of the past. Mr Poettering is right to say that we need secret services, but, more than ever, they need to use modern methods of investigation. The infiltration of organisations whose actions are intended to undermine and destroy our system of values, who do not shy away from the destruction of things of value or of life itself, is indispensable – that much is common knowledge; that it takes more than road traffic police to combat such organisations is also common knowledge. That the secret services’
is not transparent is also common knowledge – God knows that it is not. That, after all, is why they are called secret services, and their need occasionally to work in secrecy is also common knowledge. It is also common knowledge, though, that the United States of America and its current administration are not always that fussy about international law!
My view is that the decision to wage war in Iraq was taken without reference to international law. The decision to wage this war was a disaster, and the war itself is one. It follows, of course, that one cannot have a great deal of confidence in the secret services of a country whose government’s actions are not quite open and legal, or which at any rate gives that impression.
It is, of course, possible to do things that foster trust; one of them is to get the actual facts out on view for all to see, to say who flew where, when and for what reasons, to state in what manner he was taken prisoner, on what legal basis, what circumstances led to his being arrested, where he was taken, and how he was questioned. If these answers show that everything was legal and above board, then fine, but if – and we hope that this will not prove to be the case – it appears from them that we have no option but to conclude that institutions of the European Union or of its Member States played a part, whether actively or passively, in the unlawful arrest of persons or the operation of prisons outside the law, and in torture, then sanctions must be the inevitable consequence.
Let us, then, have no pre-emptive judgments; let us, instead, simply list the questions to which we expect clear answers. I can tell Mr Poettering that it is not a matter of ‘if need be’, but this very day, in the Conference of Presidents, we will be asking for a temporary committee to examine this matter. I take it as read that the Group of the European People’s Party and all the other groups will support that."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples