Prober: CIA Ran Secret Jails in Europe

[Coexist]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070608/cia-secret-prisons/

PARIS — The CIA ran secret jails in Poland and Romania to interrogate key terror suspects, shackling and handcuffing inmates, keeping some naked for weeks and reducing contact with the outer world to masked and silent guards, a European investigator said Friday.

The CIA called the report "distorted," but stopped short of denying the existence of prisons in the two countries _ the agency said it does not discuss the location of its overseas facilities. Poland and Romania also vehemently denied the allegations.

"High value detainees" like self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and suspected senior al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah were held in Poland, said the report, which cited CIA sources. It said lesser detainees, but still of "remarkable importance," were taken to Romania.

Top officials in both countries knew of the detention centers, said the report by Swiss Sen. Dick Marty, a former prosecutor asked by the Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog, to investigate CIA activities after media reports of secret prisons emerged in 2005.

[partylessinOhio]

1. I was just going to post this from Yahoo Europe:

...The alleged prisons were at the center of a "spider's web" of purported human rights abuses that Marty outlined in his initial investigation a year ago. That report focused on flights to spirit detainees to CIA hideouts with landing points in at least 14 nations. ...

Following a meeting with President Bush in Gdansk, Polish President Lech Kaczynski told reporters: "I know nothing about any CIA prisons in Poland." His predecessor, Aleksander Kwasniewski, who was president in 2001-05, said: "I deny it. I've said as much several times." ...

It told of prisoners being kept naked for weeks, sometimes attached to a "shackling ring" in cells. Buckets served as toilets. Masked guards who never spoke were the only contact for those consigned to four-month isolation regimes.

Cells, sometimes equipped with video cameras, were cramped and kept extremely hot or cold, the report said. Prisoners had to listen to irritating noises, including "torture music," rock or rap as well as "distorted" verses of the Quran, it said. ...

Marty's report said Poland and Romania hosted secret prisons under a special post-Sept. 11 CIA program to "kill, capture and detain" key terrorist suspects. It said the jails grew out of a secret pact within NATO shortly after the terror attacks on the U.S. ...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070608/ap_on_re_eu/cia_secret_prisons;_ylt=AhomH1WKXp.KKy2J24Ga89x0bBAF

[Kagemusha]

2. Distorted = You say it like it's a bad thing.

IMHO.