Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-14-Speech-3-024"
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"en.20070214.2.3-024"2
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"Mr President, the Canadian Government has accepted responsibility, apologised to Mr Maher Arar, and undertaken to pay him compensation. It testifies to the bankruptcy of Europe, the cradle of humanism, that not one single government there has to date thought it necessary to follow Canada’s example, not even the government of my own country, which currently holds the Presidency of the Council.
Instead, the word from Berlin is that the same decision would be taken today, and that no apology appears to them to be required. That sort of attitude leaves me utterly cold. That sort of behaviour is unworthy; it is shameful and unacceptable. I have no sympathy whatever for those holders of political office in my own country – its foreign minister, Mr Steinmeier, in particular – who have refused to appear before our committee or even to make any sort of statement on the suffering that Khaled El Masri and Murat Kurnaz were obliged to endure. They have gone into hiding behind the German
’s committee of inquiry and were not even willing to turn up here in this House and give a statement – one without ifs and buts – to the effect that the war on terror must not be an excuse for the violation of human rights – not for anybody, whether secret services or those who occupy positions of political responsibility. Nobody in Berlin has as yet even asked themselves what they might do to ensure that such a decision would be taken differently in future. That fact, and also the obviousness of the party political manoeuvres now being attempted in Berlin in the hope of finding a watertight explanation for the abduction of Mr El Masri and the years of torment that Mr Kurnaz endured in Guantanamo, lead me to say that I have no sympathy for the Socialist Group in the European Parliament’s Amendment 224 either. I would ask the members of that group precisely what it is – despite the questions still left unanswered in Mr El Masri’s case – that prompts them to ask for a statement to the effect that the German authorities had no hand in the illegal abduction.
Governments have the fundamental duty of investigating all human rights violations that are committed on their territory or against their citizens. They have to demonstrate that their conduct has always been correct and that they have acted in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights and the common fundamental values of the EU. That is why we have to do as we have been urged to do by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and adopt today a more strongly-worded report."@en1
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