European Human Rights investigator and Swiss Senator Dick Marty said that the United States systematically used torture through third parties as a weapon against captured Taliban fighters and suspected terrorists. Although he did not have clinching evidence on the presence of secret torture cells in Europe, there is strong suspicion that the US may have used Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Bulgaria as places to host these centers. Marty said that the European Union knew about this strategy but decided to turn a blind eye to this “dirty work.” In a report to the 46-nation council in Strasbourg, he said that over 100 people have been “abducted, deprived of their liberty and transported to different destinations in Europe, to be handed over to countries in which they have suffered degrading treatment and torture.” The Washington Post had initially broken the story about the existence of secret torture prisons in Europe and the US has neither confirmed nor denied their existence. Supporters of the US and its allies in the Iraq War said that Marty’s report was full of inconsistencies and “has more holes than a Swiss cheese.”