Secret CIA flights 'stopped in Romania and Poland'

The head of a European investigation into alleged CIA secret prisons today said planes carrying terror suspects stopped in Romania and Poland and likely dropped off detainees there.

Swiss Senator Dick Marty said in a report that Romania was part of what he called a “renditions circuit” and was used as a stopover by CIA-linked planes.

He also said an airport in Poland was likely used as a detainee drop-off point and accused several other countries of colluding with what he called the CIA’s “questionable activities”.

“We believe we are in a position to state that successive CIA rendition operations have taken place in the course of the same, single flight circuit,” Marty said.

The report, however, offered no clear, direct proof that CIA detention centres were set up in Europe and relied mostly on flight logs provided by the European Union’s air traffic agency, Eurocontrol, and evidence gathered from people who said they had been abducted by US intelligence agents.

Marty was to discuss his findings with the Council of Europe’s legal affairs committee later today.

His investigation runs parallel to one by the European Parliament, which has said data from Eurocontrol shows there have been more than 1,000 clandestine CIA flights stopping on European territory since the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Officials said it was not clear whether or how many detainees were on board, and have not shed any light on allegations of CIA secret prisons.

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.