US secret prisons in Poland and Roman

The European Commission has said it will investigate reports that the CIA set up secret jails in Eastern Europe to detain and interrogate terrorist suspects.  

The governments of the European Union's 25 members nations will be informally questioned about the allegations, EU spokesman Friso Abbing said on Thursday.  

"We have to find out what is exactly happening. We have all heard about this, then we have to see if it is confirmed."  

He said such prisons could violate EU human rights laws and other European human rights conventions, and as the watchdog to ensure EU rules are properly adhered to the Commission would look into the issue.  

He cautioned that the EU head office as such could not take action against member states if they violated human rights.  

"As far as the treatment of prisoners is concerned ... it is clear that all 25 member states having signed up to European Convention on Human Rights, and to the International Convention Against Torture, are due to respect and fully implement the obligations deriving from those treaties," Roscam Abbing told reporters.  

US officials refused to confirm or deny a report in Wednesday's Washington Post that the CIA has been hiding and interrogating top al-Qaida suspects at secret prisons, known as "black sites" in unnamed Eastern European countries, some of which are EU member states.  

According to the paper the locations of the facilities "are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country."

The report did not disclose the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the programme, at the request of senior US officials.  

Officials believed disclosure might disrupt counter-terrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere.

Citing national security concerns the CIA and the White House have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held.  

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was evasive when asked about the report on CNN.  

"I'm not going to confirm or deny on this show the existence of this programme. We normally do not talk about intelligence activities," Gonzales said.  

In a comment from the White House, spokesman Scott McClellan said, "I'm not going to get into specific intelligence activities. I will say that the president's most important responsibility is to protect the American people."  

But former president Jimmy Carter denounced what he said was "a profound and radical change in the basic policies or moral values of our country" in reaction to the report.  

"This is just one indication of what has been done under this administration to change the policies that have persisted all the way through our history," said Carter, who championed human rights during his 1977-81 presidency.  

Czech Interior Minister Frantisek Bublan was quoted by the on-line news outlet Aktualne.cz as saying that the Czech Republic recently turned down a US request to set up a detention centre on its territory.  

"The negotiations took place around a month ago," he was quoted as saying. The Americans "made an effort to install some of the sort here, but they did not succeed."  

Separately, Hungary's intelligence chief, Andras Toth, told AFP that Budapest had not been approached.  

"The mere suggestion of this is absurd," Toth said, adding "I know of no such request" from US officials.  

Russia's FSB security service, the main KGB-successor agency that leads the country's battle against militant violence, denied any such facilities on its territory, as did the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry.  

In Sofia, the foreign ministry spokesman Dimitar Tsanchev denied there were any such American bases in Bulgaria.  

"Bulgaria has never had CIA bases or bases for foreign detainees linked to al-Qaida," he said.  

"There is no detention centre of that nature in Slovakia," ministry spokesman Richard Fides told the news agency CTK.  

Vladimir Simko, spokesman for Slovakia's intelligence service SIS, told CTK that even if Slovakia did collaborate with the CIA, he could not tell the press.  

In Thailand, which was named along with Afghanistan as the location of "black site" facilities in the Washington Post report, government spokesman Surapong Suebwonglee said there was "no fact in the unfounded claims" carried by the paper.

Agencies
KavkazCenter

2005-11-04 00:40:21