Red Cross seeks access to CIA prisons
The Washington Post said on Wednesday the CIA had been hiding and interrogating inmates at a secret facility in Eastern Europe, among so-called “black sites” in eight countries under a global network set up after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
“We are concerned at the fate of an unknown number of people captured as part of the so-called global war on terror and held at undisclosed places of detention,” Antonella Notari, chief ICRC spokesperson said.
“Access to detainees is an important humanitarian priority for the Red Cross and a logical continuation of our current work in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.”
The United Nations’ Human Rights Committee said it had received two letters and a report from the United States which it hoped would address the issue of detainees being held outside the country.
The European Commission said it would look into media reports naming two east European countries as allowing the CIA to hold al-Qaida suspects outside of any national or international legal jurisdiction.
Friso Roscam Abbing, spokesperson for European Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini, said the EU executive would check the reports with Poland, a new member state, and Romania, which is due to join the European Union in 2007.
The US-based campaign organisation Human Rights Watch said it had indications the two were hosting CIA prisons. Both denied the allegations yesterday.
Mr Abbing said any secret prisons would not appear compatible with the EU’s non-binding Charter of Fundamental Rights.
He said the commission’s decision to check the reports did not signal any formal investigation.
Carroll Bogert, associate director of Human Rights Watch, outlined what had led the group to believe Poland and Romania were hosting the alleged CIA prisons.
She said the group based its assumption on flight logs, such as a Boeing 737 having made trips to eastern Europe from Afghanistan and countries in the Middle East. One flight log showed that a plane went from Kabul to north-eastern Poland on September 22, 2003.
That was the same month that “we know several CIA prisoners who were held in Afghanistan were transferred out of Afghanistan and the next day the same plane landed at a military airport in Romania,” Ms Bogert said.
US officials declined direct comment on the report, which was likely to stir up fresh criticism of the Bush administration’s treatment of terrorism suspects.
