EUROPEAN governments collaborated with the United States in the “extraordinary rendition” of terror suspects, a report by Europe’s top human rights body is expected to claim today.

According to an advance copy of the report by the Council of Europe, obtained by the BBC, Britain and 13 other countries are implicated in the practice of transferring terror suspects to a third country for questioning. Human rights groups have criticised the process, saying that it exposes detainees to the risk of torture.

Dick Marty, a Swiss Senator who has been conducting the seven-month inquiry, is reported to have concluded that rendition is based on an “utterly alien legal approach” and that a “spider’s web” of rendition flights had criss-crossed Europe.

Countries including Spain, Turkey, Germany and Cyprus provided “staging posts” for rendition operations, while Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Britain were stop-off points for flights operated by the CIA, the report added. Britain was also accused of passing on information to the CIA about its citizens or residents, who then face rendition and/or torture. Prisoners have also been captured for rendition in Italy, Sweden, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, according to the report.

Mr Marty’s most serious charges are levelled against Poland and Romania, where he is said to have unearthed “new evidence to strengthen suspicions that CIA secret prisons were or are established on their soil”. Both governments have strenuously denied the existence of such “black sites”.

“It is only through the intentional or grossly negligent collusion of the European partners that this ‘web’ was able to spread also over Europe,” the report is said to state.

The BBC said Mr Marty’s evidence was based on flight plans filed with European air traffic controllers. The data reportedly showed a “clear pattern” of “rendition circuits”, or specific missions for the transfer of prisoners. Trips were logged not only to Romania but from Afghanistan to Poland, it added.

The BBC interviewed Muhammad Bashmilah, a Yemeni who claimed to have been one of those subjected to rendition. He said that he was captured in Jordan in October 2003, flown to US custody in Afghanistan and then to a secret prison in an unknown location.

There he was held in a 10ft by 13ft (3m by 4m) cell, shackled to the floor and kept in solitary confinement for 19 months before being released, it was alleged.

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