Strasbourg, 22/10/2003 (Agence Europe) - Twenty six candles (briefly) alight is how the President of the Liberal group chose to protest on Wednesday against the inaction of the Presidency of the European Council with regard to the 26 Europeans (and in fact all the detainees) still in prison by the Americans in Guantanamo. Mr Watson called on the Presidency to raise the question at all meetings with Washington, particularly at the next EU/USA summit. According to Watson, someone like Berlusconi, "who complains so regularly that he is a victim of injustice himself, should be particularly concerned about this very real injustice on a far greater scale". Silvio Berlusconi answered this question during the press conference, pointing out that nobody had raised the issue at the summit. Romano Prodi affirmed at the plenary that if a similar thing happened in the Union, we could revert to Article 7.
In the plenary, the problem was also posed by Hans-Gert Pöttering, Enrique Baron and Monica Frassoni (who mentioned the case of "11,000 prisoners of the Americans - or kidnapped - in Iraq").