MEPs keep up pressure on EU over CIA flights

MEPs should hold regular hearings on the CIA renditions scandal every six months according to EU deputies on the parliament’s influential civil liberties committee.

In a bid to keep up the pressure on EU governments to come clean over the affair, members of the civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee on Tuesday backed a proposal by centre-right MEP Carlos Coelho to set up hearings on the scandal during each EU presidency.

“The plan is to keep up the pressure on member states so that this issue doesn’t just go away”, Coelho told theParliament.com.

“I proposed that the committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs and the subcommittee on human rights press each presidency on this issue”, said Coelho.

The Portuguese MEP was chair of the 2000 temporary committee looking into the Echelon intelligence surveillance system used by the US and others to tap telephone calls.

That committee was later dissolved, but Coelho is adamant that the parliament should proceed differently with the CIA flights probe.

Centre-left deputy Masip Hidalgo said parliamentarians had an “obligation to put this in the spotlight…especially with (presidential) elections in the US coming up”.

“This is a moral issue and hence can unite both left and right”, said Hidlago.

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