US ‘held prisoners in Europe illegally’

A EUROPEAN investigator said yesterday he has mounting indications that the US illegally held detainees in Europe - then hurriedly shipped out the last ones to North Africa when word leaked out.

Dick Marty, a Swiss senator looking into claims that the CIA operated secret prisons in Europe, did not offer details about the suspected detentions beyond what already was reported by a human rights group, an alleged former detainee and news reports.

A one-month investigation, Mr Marty said, had unearthed “clues” that Poland and Romania were implicated, perhaps unwittingly.

Mr Marty is under mandate from the Council of Europe, Europe’s human rights watchdog, to investigate claims that the CIA shipped prisoners through European airports to secret detention centres - in breach of international and national laws.

He spoke to reporters after briefing the council’s legal committee on his findings so far.

Mr Marty cited two suspected cases as signs of a “strategy”, “methodology” and “personnel” used by US authorities to at least temporarily hold suspects in Europe.

The cases cited were the alleged February 2003 kidnapping of Egyptian cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr by the CIA in Milan, Italy; and claims by Khaled al-Masri, a Lebanese-born German, that the agency took him to Afghanistan and tortured him after mistakenly identifying him as being linked to al-Qaida.

Mr Marty was critical of the US for not formally confirming or denying the allegations.