Black Sites: Secret CIA Prison in Europe / Front Page news in US

by R.Isible Fri Nov 04, 2005 02:49

According to NPR. Other people are asking why this is supposed to be so important because we already know the USA is using torture, has discussed using torture and finds it acceptable.

Is it possible that this is a muddy-the-waters move where we find that it's too hard to prove and then people discount all the torture evidence?

by helvetian gnome Tue Nov 08, 2005 13:36

["The Council of Europe http://www.coe.int/defaultEN.asp is the continent's oldest political organisation, founded in 1949. It groups together 46 countries, including 21 countries from central and eastern Europe. It is distinct from the 25-nation European Union, but no country has ever joined the EU without first belonging to the Council.
The Council, based in Strasbourg, France, defends human rights and parliamentary democracy"

The Council of Europe has appointed Swiss politician Dick Marty http://www.dickmarty.ch/
to investigate allegations that the CIA set up secret prisons in eastern Europe for terror suspects.

Last week the United States media reported that the intelligence agency had been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaeda captives at Soviet-era compounds.

The Council – which acts as a human rights watchdog – made the appointment via its parliamentary assembly's legal affairs committee on Monday. In a statement the committee said Marty, a senator from the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, had been asked to "examine the subject of alleged secret CIA detention centres with a view to a possible urgent debate at the next Standing Committee's meeting".

This will take place in Bucharest, Romania, on November 25.

The committee also urged the Council's secretary-general to ask the organisation's 46 member states to provide Marty, a former Ticino state prosecutor, with any information they may have on the subject. Marty is also authorised to visit certain member states if need be.

The statement said the committee's director, René van der Linden, had stressed last week that all member states were under a legal obligation to respect the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Council has already stated that such prisons would constitute a human rights violation.

The investigation comes after the Washington Post newspaper last week (see article above) claimed that the CIA had been holding al-Qaeda terror suspects at detention centres in eastern Europe.

In addition, Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/ said it had evidence indicating that the CIA had transported suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania.

Some governments in the former Soviet bloc, including Poland and Romania, have already denied the allegations. The European Union and the Swiss-run International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) http://www.icrc.org/ have also indicated that they would look into the issue.

The ICRC, which has had exclusive rights to visit terror suspects detained at a US military base at Guantanamo, said it had asked Washington about the allegations and requested access to the prisons if they exist.

Spokeswoman Antonella Notari said the ICRC, which also monitors conditions at US detention centres in Afghanistan and Iraq, has been unable to find some people who have reportedly been detained.

She was quoted in the Associated Press as saying the ICRC was "concerned about the fate of an unknown number of persons detained as part of what is called the "global war on terror" and held in undisclosed places of detention."

The Washington Post reported that the centres – known as "black sites" – were set up in the wake of the September 11 attacks in 2001.

About 30 detainees were held by the CIA at these sites, alleged the newspaper. A further 70 detainees had been handed over to the intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, it was reported.

The newspaper said that all sites had now been closed. The CIA has so far refused to comment and the White House has not confirmed the claims."]

by Daniel E. Teodoru - THOUGHTS FROM DIASPORA Sat Nov 19, 2005 21:48 deteodoru at yahoo dot com

In a desperate post I sought to show where I thought
Romania was going following GW Bush blind and blindly
complying with his demands. Now it faces serious
charges as a violator of human rights conventions to
which it is party by permitting use of its old
Securitate prisons to be used CIA "black sites" where
to take Afghan prisoners.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644.html

Romania was in the above article not named, but soon
Human Rights Watch and others that seek to do Romania
harm named it happily:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1515073/posts

Now let us recall that the very people who denigrate
Romania daily in slanderous whisper campaigns aimed at
the US Congress were also the designers of this
scheme. Bush was simply the blind signer of the
authority to CIA, in no way freeing Romania from later
repercussion. Romania faced all that for what?

What has the Romanian nation gained from allowing
itself to become the cover for Bush's incompetent
attempt to circumvent American law and global order?

Now I note that indymedia.romania did publish my post:

http://romania.indymedia.org/en/2005/11/1095.shtml

but classed it as "archiv de gunoi"-- garbage
archives, with a comment on how some people are sooo
very vulgar, namely me.

But the real vulgarity, it seems to me, is the
compliance with this policy, risking Romania's future
as part of Europe, making it instead victim of
Bush-America. By 2009 Bush will be gone and McCain or
Hagel will hopefully be president. America will change
its ways and may or may not resolve its war on
terrorism successfully. But what about Romania? Will
it ever have to stand before the very Europe it seeks
to join as a human rights criminal for someone else?

East Europe stands with Russia on the edge of the
Jihad. Through Central Asia, East Europe's borders are
totally porous. Jihaddists are like viruses that can't
be blocked-- they just do what they have to do in a
one-way trip. Romania has been investing in one hard
push to fix its judiciary to be a free and open state
so it can join EU. But now, serving as the Securitate
for Bush, it faces prosecution by the very Europe it
seeks to join as well as possibly drainage of its
assets trying to intercept the Jihaddists coming there
to avenge its "back sites" hospitality for alQaeda
prisoners. So, just as Romania tries to make its
justice just, it faces a possible security crisis for
its permissiveness to Bush from avenging Jihaddists
that may blunt its legal reforms and open judiciary.
And all for what?

In truth, as the Washington Post's Dana Priest
reports, what began as a place to interrogate the "Big
Bad Guys" ended up being a place to warehouse the
"Little Bad Guys" of no intel value whatever. So, the
sites got small, the purpose got small, the prisoners
got small, the importance got small; only Romania's
problems stand to be big from this.

It's time for Basescu to say something and to demand
that Bush accept his responsibility. It's time for all
East Europeans to ask themselves: what good is freedom
if all it means is that we get to be flunkies for the
West instead of the East?

It's all that simple and the vulgarity is not mine but
that of those who cannot bring themselves to protest
this travesty of Romania's good name for the sake of
Bushit-Romanian relations.

Daniel E. Teodoru