EU lawmakers start investigating CIA camp charges in Romania

dpa German Press Agency
Published: Tuesday October 17, 2006

Brussels- European lawmakers probing alleged US secret service activities in Europe on Tuesday began a three-day fact-finding mission in Romania to investigate whether the country has hosted clandestine US-run detention centres. Euro MPs are currently scrutinizing charges that the CIA ran secret camps on European territory to question terror suspects and whether national governments were complicit.

The EU delegation is scheduled to meet with top officials from the Romanian intelligence services, journalists and representatives of non-governmental organizations on October 17-19.

US President George W Bush last month for the first time acknowledged that the CIA was running secret prisons for holding and interrogating high-level al-Qaeda figures captured since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

But he did not give in to European calls to make the location of the camps public. EU lawmakers also pressed national governments to come clean about the extent of their involvement in the issue.

The EU is set to admit Bulgaria and Romania to the currently 25- nation bloc next year pending a final green light from several present member states.

Clandestine detention centres, secret flights via or from Europe to countries where suspects could face torture, or extraordinary renditions would all breach the continent's human rights conventions.

Euro MPs said earlier that they will also go on a fact-finding mission to Poland in November.

Europe's top human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, earlier this year charged that Romania and Poland had hosted clandestine CIA camps. Bucharest and Warsaw, however, deny the allegation.

The 46-member council, which is independent from the EU, is conducting a separate inquiry into the charges.

Its final report on a six-month-long inquiry said that several European states had helped the US carry out "extraordinary rendition" flights, the US practice of transporting detainees to other states for interrogation.

© 2006 dpa German Press Agency