Brussels, 26/03/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 24 March, representatives of four political groups in the European Parliament - ALDE, S&D, Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL - and of human rights organisation Amnesty International - urged the European institutions and the member states to take new steps following recent developments revealing the involvement of some EU states in the CIA secret renditions. A UN report, published at the end of January, identified a number of member states, including Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania and the United Kingdom, as being complicit. “Unfortunately, to date there has been an extremely poor record of government cooperation in seeking accountability for serious human rights violations committed in the context of the US-led 'war on terror'”, says a press release published by ALDE and backed by several MEPs: Sarah Ludford (ALDE, UK), Ana Gomes (S&D, Portugal), Raul Romeva (Greens/EFA, Spain) and Willy Meyer (GUE/NGL, Spain). They joined Amnesty International in calling on member states “to recommit themselves to full, impartial and effective enquiries into allegations of complicity in renditions to torture, the existence of secret detention facilities on their soil and to holding perpetrators criminally liable for these abuses”. They also announced that they would request that the Commission and the Council come to the EP to hold a debate on the need for action by the EU on the CIA's rendition activities and the presence of secret prisons on EU soil at one of the forthcoming sessions. (B.C./transl.rt)