OH the shame of it all
U.S. Faces Scrutiny Over Secret Prisons
Officials in Eastern Europe Deny Role
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 4, 2005; Page A20
THE HAGUE, Nov. 3 The International Committee of the Red Cross, the European Union and human rights groups said Thursday they would press the U.S. and European governments for information about the reported existence of secret prisons in Eastern Europe, where the CIA has detained top al Qaeda captives.
Government officials across that region issued denials Thursday that their countries hosted the prisons, which some European officials contend would violate local human rights laws. But the revelation, reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday, captured headlines across the continent and led human-rights organizations to call for official investigations.
The Post reported that the CIA had been interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda prisoners at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe. The classified site is part of a global network of covert prisons the CIA established after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks with locations in eight countries, including Afghanistan, Thailand and several East European democracies.
In Brussels, a spokesman for the European Union, Friso Roscam Abbing, said that the E.U. would query its 25 member states to find out more about the prisons. Their existence, he said, could violate the European Convention on Human Rights and the international Convention Against Torture, treaties that all E.U. nations are bound to follow.