ACouncil of Europe report made public June 9 said that investigators have found proof that the CIA ran clandestine prisons for terrorist suspects in Europe with the full cooperation of government leaders, especially in Poland and Romania.
A European commission spokesman told journalists that the commission was in the process of studying the report and will make assessment in due course of time as it did not want to make any hasty comments. He, however lamented that in the absence of any investigative powers, the commission could not go into the matter on its own.
The report, prepared by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator who is heading the investigation, said, “There is now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania.
“We have also had clear and detailed confirmation from our own sources, in both the American intelligence services and the countries concerned, that the two countries did host secret detention centres under a special CIA programme established by the American administration in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, to ‘kill, capture and detain’ terrorist suspects deemed to be of ‘high value’,” the report claimed.
For example, Marty’s report stated that investigators had received confirmation, “from more than one source,” of eight names of “high-value detainees” that were held in Poland between 2003 and 2005. CIA sources told Marty’s investigators that Poland was the “black site” where both Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were held and questioned using “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which is usually a euphemism for torture.
Abu Zubaydah was a leading member of Osama bin Laden’s brain trust and the operations chief of al-Qaeda. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has admitted planning the September 11 attacks on the United States.
The report states that these secret prisons “were run directly and exclusively by the CIA” and that local staff performed only “purely logistical duties.”
However, investigators had “sufficient grounds to declare that the highest state authorities were aware of the CIA’s illegal activities on their territories.” The report said that former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski as well as the former and current presidents of Romania, Ion Iliescu and Traian Basescu, “could be held accountable for these activities” because they “knew about and authorized” them.
The report noted that the “rendition, abduction and detention of terrorist suspects” have always taken place outside US borders because they would have been “ruled unlawful and unconstitutional” by American courts.
“Obviously, these actions are also unacceptable under the laws of European countries, who nonetheless tolerated them or colluded actively in carrying them out,” the report said.
“This export of illegal activities overseas is all the more shocking in that it shows fundamental contempt for the countries on whose territories it was decided to commit the relevant acts,” it said.
In addition, the fact that these measures applied only to non-US citizens reflected “a kind of legal apartheid,” the report said. The blame does not lie only with Americans, but also, “above all, with European political leaders who have knowingly acquiesced in this state of affairs.”
Marty’s report also criticised Germany and Italy for having “obstructed the search for the truth and continuing to do so by invoking the concept of ‘state secrets’.”
In an interview published in the French daily Le Figaro, Marty said, “The United States wanted to impose a war without rules against terrorism. This policy ended in disaster.”
The European Parliament which has been in the forefront of unmasking these facts about renditions flights by CIA and allied subjects was quick to respond.
MEP Sarah Ludford of the United Kingdom, vice-President of the former committee of enquiry on CIA activities in the EP said: “The new Marty report confirms what had been found by the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. Any new evidence confirming that CIA prisons existed, as we alleged, in Europe, would be damning and shameful. As MEPs demanded, we must expose the secret agreements between US intelligence services and some European governments. These illegal, undemocratic and unacceptable actions must be accounted for and punished.”
MEP Ignasi Guardans of Spain, former Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) coordinator in the CIA committee declared: “The release of this new report by the Council of Europe rapporteur will help to maintain the spotlight on what happened in the name of the ‘war on terror.’ The EP too must maintain its scrutiny of this rendition practice in the coming months and continue to push the Member States to reveal the true facts of the matter.” As an immediate reaction, EU and NATO member Poland denied the findings of the report alleging it had hosted secret US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prisons for terror suspects.
According to the report, Poland’s former president Aleksander Kwasniewski had known about the covert CIA activities on Polish soil.
“Poland maintains its position on the issue of the alleged CIA prisons on the territory of our country - There were no secret bases in Poland,” Polish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Robert Szaniawski was quoted by the Polish PAP news agency last Friday.
Szaniawski added Polish officials were waiting for the Council of Europe to produce more details and evidence to support its claims. “Up to now the evidence presented on this issue has been worth very little,” he said.