Taken from The Jerusalem Post, Nov. 6, 2006
By DPA
European lawmakers probing alleged US secret service activities in Europe are about to leave for Poland to find out whether the country has hosted clandestine US-run detention centres, the European Parliament said Monday.
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are currently scrutinizing charges that the CIA ran secret camps on European soil to question terror suspects abetted by national governments.
The EU delegation is scheduled to meet with government officials, journalists and representatives of non-governmental organizations on November 8-10.
Talks would be held with Undersecretary of State in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister Marek Pasionek and with Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, head of Poland's Foreign Intelligence Agency (AW) between 2002 and 2004.
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STRONGLY Recommended Reading:
Recap:
(1) 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."
(2) 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.
(3) 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.
(4) 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.
(5) 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,
(6) Based on 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.
I have just stumbed on a report of the following figures which shows US Department of Defense military aid, loan and loan guarantee programmes to other countries between 1992–2001 in US$ thousand (Source: PETER C. EVANS, International arms transfers)
1 Israel 19,255,644
2 Egypt 12,997,140
3 Jordan 521,295
4 Turkey 475,000
5 Portugal 100,000
6 Colombia 91,700
7 Poland 81,636
8 Morocco 69,995
9 Romania 59,337
10 Czech Rep. 56,318
11 Hungary 52,218
12 Bolivia 50,638
13 Philippines 44,779
14 Macedonia 41,274
15 Bulgaria 39,345
16 El Salvador 32,250
17 Greece 30,000
18 Slovakia 29,885
19 Estonia 26,892
20 Lithuania 26,442
21 Latvia 24,544
22 Ukraine 22,089
23 Georgia 21,490
24 Tunisia 20,493
25 Nigeria 20,000
As there is no thing as a FREE LUNCH - I wonder if there is a correlation between US Military finance and CIA secret prisons? Maybe the finance was used to ensure the US has a strong grip all throughout the world? Most of the countries mentioned have got appalling human rights abuses as reported by Amnesty International.
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