Print

Mail

wiki links

CIA ran secret prisons in Europe: inquiry

"Large numbers of people have been abducted from various locations across the world and transferred to countries where they have been persecuted and where it is known that torture is common practice."

Dick Marty, Swiss senator and head of a Council of Europe inquiry into allegations of secret CIA-run

The CIA operated secret prisons in Europe where terrorism suspects could be interrogated and were allegedly tortured, an official inquiry was set to conclude yesterday.

Despite denials by their governments, senior Polish and Romanian security officials have confirmed to the Council of Europe that their countries were used to hold some of the US' most important prisoners captured after Sept. 11 in secret.

None of the prisoners had access to the Red Cross and many were subject to what US President George W. Bush has called the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation, which critics have condemned as torture.

Although suspicions about the secret CIA prisons have existed for more than a year, the council's report, seen by and reported on by the Guardian newspaper, appears to offer the first concrete evidence. It also details the prisons' operations and the identities of some of the prisoners.

The council has also established that within weeks of the Sept. 11 attacks, NATO signed an agreement with the US that allowed civilian jets used by the CIA during its so-called extraordinary rendition program to move across member states' airspace.

Its report states: "We have sufficient grounds to declare that the highest state authorities were aware of the CIA's illegal activities on their territories." The council's investigators believe that agreement may have been illegal.

The full extent of British logistic support for the extraordinary rendition program was first disclosed by the Guardian, which first reported in September 2005 that aircraft operated by the CIA had flown in and out of UK civilian and military airports hundreds of times.

The 19-month inquiry by the council, which promotes human rights across Europe, was headed by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator and former state prosecutor.

"What was previously just a set of allegations is now proven: Large numbers of people have been abducted from various locations across the world and transferred to countries where they have been persecuted and where it is known that torture is common practice,"Marty said.

His report says there is "now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA [existed] in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania."

Marty has told the UK TV station Channel 4's Dispatches programme, in a report to be broadcast on Monday, that the jails were run "directly and exclusively" by the CIA. This was only possible because of "collaboration at various institutional levels of the US' many partner countries."

He succeeded in confirming details of the CIA's prisons by using his own "intelligence methods," which included tracking agents on both sides of the Atlantic, and persuading them to talk. Officials in Poland and Romania have repeatedly denied the existence of CIA facilities or the presence of detainees held by US authorities.

"All the members and partners of NATO signed up to the same permissive -- not to say illegal -- terms that allowed CIA operations to permeate throughout the European continent and beyond," Marty said.

There was no immediate comment from NATO.
This story has been viewed 1232 times.