[Ppnews] CIA ran secret prisons for detainees in Europe, says inquiry

[Political Prisoner News]

CIA ran secret prisons for detainees in Europe, says inquiry

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2098266,00.html

Stephen Grey
Friday June 8, 2007
<http://www.guardian.co.uk>The Guardian

The CIA operated secret prisons in Europe where terrorism suspects 
could be interrogated and were allegedly tortured, an official 
inquiry will conclude today.

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 America's most important 
prisoners captured after 9/11 in secret.

None of the prisoners had access to the Red Cross and many were 
subject to what George 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 the Guardian, 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 9/11 
attacks, Nato signed an agreement with the US that allowed civilian 
jets used by the CIA during its so-called extraordinary rendition 
programme 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 programme was first disclosed by the Guardian, which 
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. He said: "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."

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". Mr Marty has told Channel 
4's Dispatches, 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 
America's 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.

But Mr Marty concluded: "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 ..." There was no immediate comment from Nato.




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