EU to ask govts for 'CIA prisons' statements

The European Union said today it would ask governments of its East European member countries, and those seeking membership, to comment publicly on allegations that the CIA set up secret jails in the region to interrogate al-Qaida suspects.

The allegations triggered a series of denials from governments in the former Soviet bloc. EU officials, the international Red Cross and the continent’s top human rights organisation have said they would look into the issue.

EU spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing told reporters that the European Commission, the EU’s executive office, would ask East European governments that have not yet denied the existence of secret prisons on their territories to make statements on the issue “if only to get as much clarity and transparency as possible”.

The commission had earlier said it would make an informal investigation, requesting answers from all 25 member governments as well as EU candidates Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Turkey.

A report on Wednesday in the Washington Post said the CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaida captives at Soviet-era compounds in Eastern Europe.

Human Rights Watch in New York said yesterday it had evidence indicating the CIA transported suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania. The conclusion is based on an analysis of flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004 obtained by the group, said Mark Garlasco, a senior military analyst with the organisation.

Human Rights Watch said it matched the flight patterns of the CIA aircraft with testimony from some of the hundreds of detainees in the war on terrorism who have been released by the US.

Garlasco said two destinations of the flights in particular stood out as likely sites of any secret CIA detention centres: Szymany Airport in Poland, which is near the headquarters of Poland’s intelligence service; and Mihail Kogalniceanu military airfield in Romania.

Poland and Romania have vigorously denied the existence of secret detention centres on their territories.

“It is obvious we’ll take the statements of those countries for true. Only if we receive evidence which would prove the contrary we will decide what possible next steps to take in terms of contacting authorities,” Roscam Abbing said.

He said Human Rights Watch told the commission there was “evidence there would have been transfer of people to the aforementioned countries in 2003 and 2004”.

“We haven’t heard anything about practices which would take place now. We need to know what it is (the Human Rights Watch) precisely are alleging,” he said.

Roscam Abbing said there are American bases in many European countries and “one could even imagine that they could be used for transferring people”.

“Another story would be if there were people held secretly for an x-number of days. That would amount to detention, and we have no evidence that this would be the case,” he said.