CIA prisons in Europe closed in November - ABC News
WASHINGTON, Tuesday (Reuters) The United States held captured al
Qaeda suspects at secret CIA prisons in Europe until last month when the
facilities were shut down after media reports of their existence, ABC
News reported citing current and former CIA agents.
Eleven al Qaeda prisoners who were held in Eastern Europe have been
transferred and were being relocated "to a CIA site somewhere in north
Africa," ABC reported, citing CIA sources.
ABC said the CIA declined comment and an agency spokesman was not
available when Reuters tried to contact him.
According to ABC News, eight top al Qaeda figures and three others
were held at one time at a former Soviet air base in Eastern Europe and
some were later moved to a second country. ABC said Polish sources had
identified a base as the cite of a secret prison location.
U.S-based Human Rights Watch has said Poland and Romania were the
most likely locations for the detention centers, but both countries have
denied it.
The United States has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of
the secret prisons, as reported by the Washington Post last month.
Before leaving Washington for Europe on Monday, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, defended U.S. treatment of terrorism suspects. She did
not directly address the allegation that the CIA has run secret prisons
in Eastern Europe, however, she reaffirmed the United States does not
use torture. ABC News cited intelligence officers as saying that Rice
could say that because of a presidential finding that approved six
refined methods of interrogation, not defined by the United States as
torture.
The report cited its sources as saying that the al Qaeda suspects
being held are regularly subjected to these interrogation techniques,
which include sleep deprivation and a practice called "waterboarding" in
which the subject feels they are being drowned. |