Brussels, 28/03/2006 (Agence Europe) - “We now have clear, well-documented and entirely credible testimony from an innocent person about the way in which the CIA has been acting”, German MEP Wolfgang Kreissl-Dörfler (PES) said on 23 March after the Canadian national, Maher Arar, was heard before the European Parliament's temporary committee on the illegal activity of the CIA on European soil (EUROPE 9159). During the hearing, Mr Arar had given a detailed description of how he had been chained hand and foot, beaten and blindfolded and held for more than ten months in a Syrian gaol. Speaking of the fact that the plane carrying the prisoner from the United States to Syria had stopped over in Rome, the vice-president of the Socialist Group, Jan Marinus Wiersma (NL), said it was “hard to believe” that the Italian secret services knew nothing of it. “This is a matter that clearly needs further investigation”, he concluded.