Bush must come clean on "ghost detainees"

4.57.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Thu 7th Jun 2007

Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP, Liberal Democrat European justice spokeswoman, has endorsed the report from 6 human rights NGOs demanding knowledge of the whereabouts of 39 'ghost detainees' who were at some point in US custody but have now disappeared.

Sarah Ludford, who was the vice-chair of the European Parliament temporary committee on rendition which reported in February, said:

"George Bush and the CIA need to come clean. Last September when Bush announced the transfer of 14 prisoners to Guantanamo Bay he claimed there were no more in CIA secret prisons. So what has happened to the more than 3 dozen people known to have been in their hands? No doubt they were 'outsourced' for torture, but they must be accounted for."

"Regardless of the crimes which the CIA believes people may have committed, the US is not above the law. The hypocrisy of preaching 'freedom and democracy' while trampling on fundamental rights exposes the West as morally corrupt."

"To set an example, all EU states must as a matter of EU policy sign up to the UN convention against enforced disappearance, described by the European Commission as 'a milestone in the global fight against impunity'. Maybe it is not a coincidence but a significant pointer that none of the states most in the frame for collusion in extraordinary rendition - UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Romania - have yet done so."