Senator to present alleged CIA secret prisons findings

The head of a European investigation into alleged CIA secret prisons and flights in Europe will present his findings tomorrow after studying satellite images of suspect locations and log books archived by the European Union’s air safety organisation.

In his previous report in February, Swiss Senator Dick Marty said that evidence pointed to the existence of a system of “outsourcing” of torture by the United States, and that it was highly likely European governments were aware of it.

But Marty, looking into news reports of questionable CIA activities on behalf of the Council of Europe, offered no tangible proof of the existence of clandestine centres in Europe.

He said his efforts were hindered by a lack of cooperation by EU governments, a complaint he is likely to repeat when presenting the findings in Paris, according to officials at the human rights watchdog.

Marty refused to elaborate on his findings before he discusses them with the Council of Europe’s legal affairs committee on tomorrow.

Marty’s investigation runs parallel to a probe by the European Parliament, which has said data from Eurocontrol, the EU’s air traffic agency, show there have been more than 1,000 clandestine CIA flights stopping on European territory since the September 11 attacks in the United States.

But they said it was not clear if or how many detainees were on board, and have not shed any light on allegations of CIA secret prisons. Marty was also studying flight logs, looking for a pattern of CIA operations in Europe.

Allegations that CIA agents shipped prisoners through European airports to secret detention centres, including compounds in Eastern Europe, were first reported in November by The Washington Post. Human Rights Watch later identified air bases in Poland and Romania as possible locations of the alleged secret prisons, but both countries have denied involvement

Clandestine prisons and secret flights via or from Europe to countries where suspects could face torture would breach the continent’s human rights conventions.

The European Union’s main satellite center in Torrejon de Ardoz, Spain, said it had supplied Marty with high-resolution images of the air bases in north-eastern Poland and eastern Romania to assist with the investigation, but warned that the existence of clandestine prisons would be hard to ascertain based on the pictures as there was no continuous satellite surveillance of the sites and the center only had images for some days.