President Bush Admits Secret CIA Prisons Whilst The EU Investigates Member Countries

President George W. Bush acknowledged on Wednesday that the CIA had interrogated dozens of terrorism suspects at secret overseas locations and said 14 of those held had been sent to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay. U.S. officials have said that the CIA held no more suspects.

Bush was forced to come up with a new method to try foreign terrorist suspects after the U.S. Supreme Court in June rejected the military tribunal system his administration set up to tryGuantanamo prisoners, most captured in Afghanistan.

Bush strongly defended the secret detention and questioning of terrorism suspects and said the CIA treated them humanely and did not torture. Human rights activists greeted his announcement with some scepticism. The detention program, disclosed last year by The Washington Post newspaper, provoked an international outcry. The newspaper did not publish the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counter terrorism efforts in those countries andelsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.

The Bush administration previously declined to admit the existence of the secret CIA prisons. The U.N. committee against torture in May called on the United States to close any such facilities, but senior administration officials said the program was essential and would remain open.

European lawmakers demanded on Thursday that their governments reveal the location of secret CIA prisons. EU member Poland and candidate country Romania, accused of hosting secret CIAdetention centers by an investigator for Europe's chief human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, issued fresh denials, but EU lawmakers were not satisfied."The location of these prison camps must be made public," said German lawmaker Wolfgang Kreissl-Doerfler, a member of a European Parliament committee investigating the allegations. "We need to know if there has been any complicity in illegal acts," he added.

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It’s been long time coming but President Bush has finally come out with the truth. His statement has surprised many people including myself but the arrogant treatment of it allies by the US and has prompted the president to admit the facts.

Here is some fascinating information:
Former CIA agent Michael Scheuer told CBS' "60 Minutes" in march that the program began under the Clinton administration -- and he said everyone knew that terror suspects were being sent to countries that "don't have the same legal system we have." …"It's convenient in the sense that it allows American policymakers and American politicians to avoid making hard decisions," he said. "It's very convenient. It's finding someone else to do your dirty work." Asked whether that makes the United States complicit in torture, Scheuer said, "You'll have to ask the lawyers."

The Telegraph reported that in 2003, the United States cut off military aid to almost 50 countries that have refused to sign immunity deals exempting American citizens from prosecution by the International Criminal Court. Why was the US afraid of the ICC?It was also the year the UK and US agrred on the Extradition Act, well, the UK did anyway. Britain allows US officials to extradite suspected criminals on the basis merely of "information providing a reasonable basis to believe" that a person has committed an offence. It has been said that the US has similar agreements with some of the Eastern European Countries that have now joined or are in the process of joining the EU.

Poland and Romania are two “Eastern European” countries being accused of having secret CIA prisons. The Polish & Romanian governments have flatly denied any activity. Poland's leading Gazeta Wyborcza daily as well as U.S.-based lobby group Human Rights Watch reported in 2003 of CIA activity at the abandoned Szymany military airfield in northern Poland.

Dick Marty, a Swiss lawyer working on behalf of the Council of Europe, the continent's official human rights organization, said at least seven other European nations colluded with the CIA to capture and secretly detain terrorism suspects, including several who were ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing.

Sweden, Italy, Britain, Turkey, Germany, Bosnia and Macedonia "could be held responsible for violations of the rights of specific individuals" who were handed over to the CIA or captured by U.S. operatives in those countries, Marty said in a report released in Paris.He also said Spain, Cyprus, Ireland, Greece and Portugal turned a blind eye to CIA-chartered flights that landed on their soil to transfer terrorism suspects within Europe and beyond.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack characterized the report as "sort of rehash" and lacking in "solid facts." Marty acknowledged that he lacked proof that would firmly establish the existence of the secret prisons. But he cited flight data and satellite photos acquired from European agencies as evidence that the CIA transported high-level terrorism suspects from Afghanistan to airports in Szymany, Poland, in October 2003 and Timisoara, Romania, in January 2004. Marty said a close examination of the flights indicated that the suspects were dropped off in those countries for detention.

According to his analysis of the flight data, Marty found a pattern of "flight circuits" involving CIA-chartered aircraft that often began at Washington Dulles International Airport and made several common stops around the world before returning to the United States or to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Based on the same flight analysis, Marty reported that there was "prima facie" evidence that the CIA regularly delivered al-Qaeda suspects to detention centers outside Europe, including facilities in Algiers; Amman, Jordan; Baghdad; Cairo; Islamabad, Pakistan; Kabul, Afghanistan; Rabat, Morocco; and Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Useful Reading:
Washington Post, June 2006: European Probe Finds Signs Of CIA-Run Secret Prisons
CNN , March 2005: CIA sends terror suspects abroad for interrogation
BBC, November 2005: US Probes Secret CIA jail claim
Washington Post, November 2005: CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
Daily Telegraph, July 2003: US military aid stopped in court immunity rift
EU Report: Alleged secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving Council of Europemember states