11–18 of 18 posts
Maybe they could turn their attention to the US? There are some CIA people in serious need of indictment. Fortunately there is no statute of limitations on torture. We know who they are. It would be a shame to wait until after they are dead.
What do you expect the Council of Europe to do in the US?
Ok? Why should we care?
The reason this is probably posted is that there was some noise on Twitter last year between someone from the council and the Dutch police. The council person had jumped to conclusions on some Twitter "evidence" that turned out to be a video that wasn't from the day and thing it was claimed to be from and they hadn't verified this before tweeting.
Maybe they could turn their attention to the US? There are some CIA people in serious need of indictment. Fortunately there is no statute of limitations on torture. We know who they are. It would be a shame to wait until after they are dead.
What do you expect the Council of Europe to do in the US?
> At the end of the visit, the delegation presented its preliminary observations to the authorities of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Am I missing a link or something? This appears to describe the visits, but does not describe any conclusions nor observations.
For context [0], this is a regular visit, done 18 times a year across the COE's member countries, so for each country roughly every 4 years. (For extra extra context, the COE is a superset of the EU, which while not particularly binding serves more of a United Nations-like purpose, with a focus on human rights, democracy and rule-of-law.) Intriguingly: > The CPT [Committee for the Prevention of Torture] does not publ…
The Council is older, and has a much more limited purpose.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you expect the Council of Europe to do in the US?
Punish the countries/individuals who hosted CIA torture prisons
Even more so than the UN, the Council of Europe is ultimately just a meeting between sovereign entities, it exists at their whim. Collectively the members would prefer to, at least on paper, adhere to certain rules which might prove inconvenient in practice. For example, on paper as a CoE member Russia did not have Capital Punishment or Torture. In principle Russians who annoyed Vladimir Putin could perhaps be imprisoned but not tortured or executed. In practice of course the Russian state continued to kill people, indeed including poisoning people in other countries, but it did so illegally. In March the Council kicked out Russia because invading another member country on a flimsy pretext was taking the piss.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Punish the countries/individuals who hosted CIA torture prisons
The council has no ability to punish anybody. Its members are sovereign entities, and so they could punish individuals, or themselves, or each other, to some extent, but they likely won't. Even more so than the UN, the Council of Europe is ultimately just a meeting between sovereign entities, it exists at their whim. Collectively the members would prefer to, at least on paper, adhere to certain rules which might prov…