On Tuesday the Financial Times reported that European concerns over reports of a CIA secret prison facility in Eastern Europe, first given wide publicity by reporter Dana Priest on Nov. 2 in the Washington Post, have "steadily grown ever since."[1] -- And "a second line of inquiry has already yielded more concrete results: records of U.S. aircraft stopping in countries such as Spain, Ireland, and Switzerland. . . . Judicial investigations into the affair are beginning in Italy, Spain, and Germany, while Sweden and Norway have asked the U.S. for more information about CIA flights," wrote Daniel Dombey. "Last week Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, was asked by his EU counterparts to request an explanation from the U.S." -- Last Thursday, AP reported that inquiries were increasingly focused on Mihail Kogalniceanu base southeastern Romania, just inland from Constanta, a Black Sea port.[2] -- Although use of the base to hold prisoners secretly is vehemently denied by Romania officials concerned about the issue's possible impact on Romania's entry into the EU, reporter William J. Kole said that "Ioan Mircea Pascu, Romania's defense minister in 2001-2004, told the AP that parts of Mihail Kogalniceanu were off-limits to Romanian authorities, and the country's main intelligence agency said it has no jurisdiction there." -- Poland's Szczytno-Szymany airport is also a target of inquiry by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator who is leading a European probe into the secret CIA prisons for the Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights watchdog. -- (Marty presented a first report on his work at a closed meeting in Paris on Nov. 22.) -- AP reporters and a photographer were allowed onto the 790-acre military base and "found it virtually deserted, with no Americans on the installation and no obvious sign of a detention center among its 104 buildings," Kole reported. "They include a U.S.-built gymnasium erected in 2003 and new, wood-paneled and carpeted briefing rooms tucked amid groves of scraggly trees." -- Meanwhile, on Friday AP reported that the Dutch had confirmed "that a plane landed at Amsterdam's airport last week belonging to Path Corp., a company previously linked to the CIA. Also Friday, the Portuguese government said it was consulting with the U.S. government after Diario de Noticias reported Friday that 34 planes that landed in Portugal over the past three years were suspected of involvement in secret CIA operations. Spanish authorities have investigated at least 10 stopovers on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca by private planes described in Spanish media reports as being operated for the CIA, and a smaller number of similar stopovers in the Canary Islands." -- Also on Friday, AP reported that "Foreign Minister Ben Bot has sought more information from U.S. officials" about the secret prisons.[4] -- "If [the Americans] continue to 'beat about the bush on reports on CIA prisons this could have consequences for our contribution to new military missions,' Bot said. 'The U.S. must not play hide and seek. Sooner or later it will come out anyway.'" -- In another sign that the issue is not dying down, AP reported Monday that "The United States has told the European Union it needs more time to respond to media reports that the CIA set up secret jails in some European nations and transported terror suspects by covert flights, the top EU justice official said Monday.[5] -- Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini also warned that that any of the 25 bloc nations found to have operated secret CIA prisons could have their EU voting rights suspended." ...
1.
The Americas
'SECRET CIA JAILS' CLAIM DEEPENS DIVIDE BETWEEN U.S. AND EUROPE
By Daniel Dombey
Financial Times (UK)
November 29, 2005
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/a39aa83c-607d-11da-a3a6-0000779e2340.html
BARCELONA -- The senior European diplomat could not have been clearer: "You don't talk about torture in the morning and then say in the afternoon: 'Democratize yourself.'"
His comments, on the contrast between the Bush administration's use of intensive interrogation techniques abroad and its public message about worldwide democratization underlined how Iraq-war tensions have found an echo in the controversy over the CIA's alleged "secret prisons."
They also show how, despite President George W. Bush's high-profile attempt this year at rapprochement with Europe, the two sides of the Atlantic are still often at odds over international law and the fight against terrorism.
The storm has steadily grown ever since the Washington Post claimed this month that Europe had hosted secret facilities used by the Central Intelligence Agency to interrogate terror suspects.
The issue is also likely to overshadow the inaugural trip to Washington today of Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany's new foreign minister, who will discuss the issue with Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state.
Poland and Romania, indicated as likely hosts of the facilities by human rights groups, have vehemently denied any such allegations. But a second line of inquiry has already yielded more concrete results: records of U.S. aircraft stopping in countries such as Spain, Ireland, and Switzerland.
The suspicion is that they were carrying suspects for interrogation in places where torture is practised or where, as in Guantánamo Bay, the applicable rules are less binding than in the U.S. or the European Union.
Judicial investigations into the affair are beginning in Italy, Spain, and Germany, while Sweden and Norway have asked the U.S. for more information about CIA flights. Last week Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, was asked by his EU counterparts to request an explanation from the U.S.
"We cannot limit ourselves solely to the 'secret prisons' issue," said Dick Marty, the Swiss politician who has headed the main political investigation into the incidents under the auspices of the 46-member Council of Europe, covering countries from east and west Europe including Russia.
He said that further investigation needed to look into "illegal detention, even of a short duration" of U.S. prisoners on European soil, such as stops to refuel aircraft.
At heart, many European countries recoil from Washington's approach to its "war on terrorism," preferring instead the legalistic approach for which the Bush administration criticizes its Democratic predecessor.
The controversy is strongest in the "old Europe" countries to the west of the continent, where U.S. diplomacy is often seen as particularly heavy-handed. Despite Mr. Bush's multiple trips to Europe this year, public opinion has not warmed to his administration. A poll by the German Marshall Fund of the US found European attitudes towards the U.S. largely unchanged.
The U.S. and the EU have co-operated more closely this year on specific issues such as Syria and Iran, and the U.S. has modest hopes for better relations with Germany in the wake of the election of Angela Merkel, the new Christian Democrat chancellor. But the CIA affair has tested the relationship anew, because European governments must weigh their wish to work with Washington against domestic calls to be tough on torture.
"This is a reflection of how the two sides see the world differently and how they see terrorism differently," says Jeremy Shapiro, director of research at the center for U.S. and Europe at the Brookings Institution in Europe. "But I don't see this as a huge problem for EU-U.S. relations, because there's not going to be any hugely public spat on this issue. The U.S. won't say that there weren't any secret prisons in Europe, but it will give assurances that they are not there now."
He added that a quiet U.S. backdown was all the more likely because of the attempt by Senator John McCain to provide firmer checks against the use of torture -- an initiative that has led to a public relations disaster for the White House.
But in the meantime the dispute has only served to highlight, once again, the profound difference in philosophy between the European Union and the Bush administration.
2.
World
ROMANIAN BASE FOCUS OF SECRET PRISON PROBE
By William J. Kole
Washington Post
November 24, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/24/AR2005112400460.html
[PHOTO CAPTION: Dick Marty, a Swiss senator leading a European probe into alleged secret CIA prisons in eastern Europe, presents a first report on his work at a closed meeting of the human rights watchdog's legal affairs committee in Paris, Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2005. Marty is investigating for the Council of Europe 31 suspected flights that landed in Europe in recent years and is trying to acquire past satellite images of sites in Romania and Poland.]
MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIR BASE, Romania -- In a weedy field on this wind-swept military base, Romanians in greasy combat fatigues tinker with unmanned drone aircraft near a ragged lineup of rusting MiG-29 fighter jets.
There's not an American in sight, but the sprawling Soviet-era facility has become a key focus of a European investigation into allegations the CIA operated secret prisons where suspected terrorists were interrogated.
Top Romanian leaders and the Pentagon vehemently deny that the Mihail Kogalniceanu base in the country's southeast ever hosted a covert detention center, and the Romanians insist the United States never used it as a transit point for al-Qaida captives.
"It's impossible for something like that to have happened on this base," Lt. Cmdr. Florin Putanu, the base's No. 2 officer, angrily told the Associated Press in a recent interview.
But the compound, heavily used by American forces in 2001-2003 to transport troops and equipment to Afghanistan and Iraq, and scheduled to be handed over to the U.S. military early next year, is under increasing scrutiny.
Ioan Mircea Pascu, Romania's defense minister in 2001-2004, told the AP that parts of Mihail Kogalniceanu were off-limits to Romanian authorities, and the country's main intelligence agency said it has no jurisdiction there.
Pascu said he could not determine whether prisoners were ever held at the installation, but he conceded that planes flying captives to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may have made stopovers in Romania.
On Tuesday, Swiss lawmaker Dick Marty -- heading the probe by the Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights watchdog -- said he was trying to acquire past satellite images of the base and Poland's Szczytno-Szymany airport. Both airfields, Human Rights Watch has alleged, were likely sites for clandestine CIA prisons.
Marty has asked the Brussels, Belgium-based Eurocontrol air safety organization to provide details of 31 suspected aircraft that landed in Europe and, according to Human Rights Watch, had direct or indirect links to the CIA.
Several of the flights stopped at the Romanian and Polish sites, the group said, basing its information on flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004. It said one of the alleged CIA flights that transited Mihail Kogalniceanu on Sept. 22, 2003, originated in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Other airports that might have been used by CIA aircraft in some capacity include Palma de Mallorca in Spain, Larnaca in Cyprus, and Shannon in Ireland, as well as the U.S. air base at Ramstein, Germany, Marty said. Investigations into alleged CIA landings or flyovers are under way in Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, and there have been unconfirmed reports in Macedonia and Malta.
Officials in ex-communist Romania -- like Poland, a key U.S. ally in the global war on terrorism -- have reacted with outrage to the suggestion that Mihail Kogalniceanu may have been used to transport, hide, or interrogate suspected terrorists.
Secret detention centers, the alleged existence of which was first reported earlier this month by the Washington Post, would be illegal in both nations and could deal a huge setback to Romania's drive to join the European Union in 2007.
The CIA has refused to comment on the European investigation.
The U.S. Department of Defense "did not and does not detain enemy combatants in Romania," a spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, told AP. He said the Pentagon would not disclose what countries the U.S. military might fly over "or make brief refueling stops in during detainee movements. Doing so would constitute a safety risk to both the detainees and our troops."
Romanian President Traian Basescu said U.S. officials never asked the country to host a so-called "black site" prison. The Defense Ministry said it was unaware of any such site, and Foreign Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu said there was "nothing in our dossier" or in documents from the previous government ousted last year.
"In good faith, I have no idea of such a thing," Ungureanu told AP.
AP reporters and a photographer allowed to roam the 790-acre military base found it virtually deserted, with no Americans on the installation and no obvious sign of a detention center among its 104 buildings. They include a U.S.-built gymnasium erected in 2003 and new, wood-paneled and carpeted briefing rooms tucked amid groves of scraggly trees.
Only two Romanian soldiers guarded the front gate of the base, which is surrounded by a fence topped with concertina wire and signs warning passers-by not to take photographs.
Lt. Cmdr. Adrian Vasile, who oversees the base, said U.S. forces -- who at one point numbered 3,500 -- pulled out in June 2003. About 1,600 American troops returned in July and August for joint training exercises.
In October 2004, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited the installation just inland from the Black Sea port city of Constanta. The Pentagon intends to take it over as part of a strategic shift aimed at placing American forces on "lily pads" closer to potential targets in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Asked whether U.S. officials could have carried out covert activities on the base without his knowledge, Vasile said flatly: "No."
Putanu, his deputy, said he had no knowledge of any American intelligence officers or Muslim prisoners setting foot on the installation.
Romania, which shook off communism in 1989 after decades of repression under the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, developed close ties with the United States in its quest for membership in NATO, which it joined in 2003.
At Washington's request, the country was among the first to sign a treaty exempting U.S. citizens from prosecution by the newly established International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. It has deployed non-combat troops to help U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and has allowed the United States to use its airspace.
Underscoring the friendship between the two countries, the main road leading to the base airstrip has been named George Washington Boulevard.
"Here at Kogalniceanu, we are human," Putanu said. "Really good things are happening here. It's a shame that someone who may not even know where Romania is would throw dirt on what we are trying to do."
3.
INVESTIGATOR SAYS BIG CIA PRISONS UNLIKELY
By Alison Mutler
Associated Press
November 25, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/25/AR2005112501114.html
[PHOTO CAPTION: Swiss lawmaker Dick Marty speaks during a meeting of The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Friday Nov. 25 2005 in Bucharest, Romania to discuss issues including the alleged secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe. On Tuesday, Swiss lawmaker Dick Marty heading the probe by the Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights watchdog said he was trying to acquire past satellite images of the base and Poland's Szczytno-Szymany airport. Both airfields, Human Rights Watch has alleged, were likely sites for clandestine CIA prisons.]
BUCHAREST, Romania -- The head of a European investigation into alleged secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe said Friday it was unlikely that there were large clandestine detention centers in the region.
Dick Marty, the Swiss senator heading the investigation on behalf of the Council of Europe, said he did not believe a prison like the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was possible in the region.
"But it is possible that there were detainees that stayed 10, 15, or 30 days," Marty told reporters, without referring to any country. "We do not have the full picture."
Marty was in Romania for a meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
The council's secretary general, Terry Davis, said he has written to its member nations asking them if they have laws to prevent the transportation of prisoners and secret prisons. The countries have until Feb. 21 to respond.
The council, Europe's main human rights watchdog, began investigations after the Washington Post and Human Rights Watch published reports about CIA planes transporting suspected terrorist through European countries and raised the possibility that the CIA had set up secret detention facilities in Eastern Europe.
Human Rights Watch said flights stopped at the Romanian air base of Mihail Kogalniceanu and Poland's Szczytno-Szymany airport, basing its information on flight logs of suspected CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004.
Romanian leaders and the Pentagon have denied that the Mihail Kogalniceanu base ever hosted a covert detention center, and the Romanians insist the United States never used it as a transit point for al-Qaida captives. Poland's prime minister said the reports were worth investigating.
The CIA has refused to comment on the European investigation.
Marty has asked the Brussels, Belgium-based Eurocontrol air safety organization to provide details of 31 suspected aircraft that landed in Europe and, according to Human Rights Watch, had direct or indirect links to the CIA.
The Dutch government confirmed Friday that a plane landed at Amsterdam's airport last week belonging to Path Corp., a company previously linked to the CIA.
Also Friday, the Portuguese government said it was consulting with the U.S. government after Diario de Noticias reported Friday that 34 planes that landed in Portugal over the past three years were suspected of involvement in secret CIA operations.
Spanish authorities have investigated at least 10 stopovers on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca by private planes described in Spanish media reports as being operated for the CIA, and a smaller number of similar stopovers in the Canary Islands.
4.
World
DUTCH ASKS U.S. ABOUT CIA PRISONER FLIGHT
Associated Press
November 25, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/25/AR2005112500189.html
THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The Netherlands has asked the United States for clarification about claims that a CIA prisoner flight landed on Dutch soil last week, Dutch media reported Friday.
The flight is believed to have been destined for a secret CIA prison allegedly operated by the intelligence agency in Eastern Europe to interrogate terrorism suspects.
Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Herman van Gelderen declined immediate comment.
The United States has not confirmed the existence of the prisons and Eastern European countries deny knowledge of covert facilities. The daily Volkskrant reported that Foreign Minister Ben Bot has sought more information from U.S. officials.
Bot told parliament Thursday the Dutch may reconsider their role in U.S. military operations if the reports of CIA prisons are true and Americans have violated human rights.
If they continue to "beat about the bush on reports on CIA prisons this could have consequences for our contribution to new military missions," Bot said. "The U.S. must not play hide and seek. Sooner or later it will come out anyway."
The Dutch are due to deploy more than 1,000 NATO troops in the high-risk Uruzgan province in Afghanistan in the spring, but are reconsidering in light of intelligence reports on the poor security situation.
5.
World
EU MAY SUSPEND NATIONS WITH SECRET PRISONS
By Paul Ames
Associated Press
November 28, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/28/AR2005112800203.html
BERLIN -- The United States has told the European Union it needs more time to respond to media reports that the CIA set up secret jails in some European nations and transported terror suspects by covert flights, the top EU justice official said Monday.
Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini also warned that that any of the 25 bloc nations found to have operated secret CIA prisons could have their EU voting rights suspended.
The Council of Europe -- the continent's main human rights watchdog -- is investigating the allegations, and EU justice official Jonathan Faul last week formally raised the issue with White House and U.S. State Department representatives, Frattini said.
"They told him: 'Give us the appropriate time to evaluate the situation.' Right now, there is no response," he said.
The CIA has refused to comment on the European investigation.
Frattini said suspending EU voting rights would be justified under the EU treaty, which stipulates that the bloc is founded on the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law, and that a persistent breach of these principles can be punished.
Clandestine detention centers would violate the European Convention on Human Rights.
Allegations that the CIA hid and interrogated key al-Qaida suspects at Soviet-era compounds in Eastern Europe were first reported Nov. 2 in the Washington Post. A day after the report appeared, Human Rights Watch said it had evidence indicating the CIA transported suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania.
Poland President Aleksander Kwasniewski reiterated Monday that his country has never allowed the CIA to hold prisoners on its territory.
However, Kwasniewski said he was not the right official to comment on related allegations that CIA flights carrying terror suspects had secretly landed in Poland.
"No president is informed if some plane lands," Kwasniewski said.
Frattini said Romania's interior minister, Vasile Blaga, had assured him the allegations were untrue and that a base at Mihail Kogalniceanu -- used by American forces from 2001-03 to transport troops and equipment to Afghanistan and Iraq -- was not used as a detention center.
"It is very, very important to get the truth. It is impossible to move only on the basis of allegations," Frattini said.
Reports of secret CIA flights followed the allegations of secret prisons, as more and more countries have decided to open investigations into the issue. Frattini said if the flights took place without the knowledge of local authorities, they would be violations of international aviation agreements.
Other airports that might have been used by CIA aircraft in some capacity include Palma de Mallorca in Spain, Larnaca in Cyprus, and Shannon in Ireland, as well as the U.S. air base at Ramstein, Germany, EU officials have said. Investigations into alleged CIA landings or fly overs have been launched in Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and there have been unconfirmed reports in Macedonia and Malta.