Home > THE CIA’S ’BLACK SITES’ : Guantanamos in Europe?
THE CIA’S ’BLACK SITES’ : Guantanamos in Europe?
by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 9 November 20055 comments
Prison Europe Secret Services USA
Is the CIA using secret locations in Europe to interrogate prisoners in America’s war against terror? Reports about "black sites" have unsettled even the Bush administration’s closest European partners.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen considers himself "America’s best friend" in Europe. He even broke a long-standing Danish tradition of seeking parliament-wide consensus in contentious foreign policy issues to back Washington’s decision to invade Iraq.
But the right-wing leader’s closeness to United States President George W. Bush may be changing. The government in Copenhagen has accused its American friends of violating Danish airspace 12 times since 2001 — as recently as Oct. 10 with an aircraft linked to the US Central Intelligence Agency. The plane — a Gulfstream 5 often used by the CIA — was on its way from a US base in Keflavik, Iceland to Budapest, Hungary and was presumed to be carrying Islamic terror suspects.
Another CIA plane even landed in Copenhagen for 23 hours last March, prompting Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Møller in August to make "clear to US officials that Denmark does not want its airspace used for purposes that are in conflict with international conventions."
Concern amongst European officials has grown following a report published last week in the Washington Post detailing an expansive network of so-called "black sites" across Eastern Europe — mostly prisons and military bases — allegedly used by the US intelligence community to house and interrogate suspected Islamic terrorists.
EU worried about torture
According to Danish sources, two top level al-Qaida members, the group’s operations chief Abu Zubaida and planner of the 9/11 attacks Ramzi Binalshibh, have been held at least temporarily in Europe. The most damaging allegation is that the CIA may be using "improved interrogation techniques" that are outlawed by the United Nations Convention Against Torture and US military law when questioning prisoners overseas.
The group Human Rights Watch compared information from former detainees and European officials with 150 flights from 33 aircraft thought to be used for American intelligence activities. The analysis highlighted several destinations in Eastern Europe — including airports in Skopje, Macedonia and Timisioara and Bucharest, Romania in 2004. A year earlier, flights headed to both Prague in the Czech Republic and the supposedly closed small airport Szymany in northeastern Poland.
Understandably, officials from those countries have either denied involvement in the CIA’s plans or have remained silent. According to the Washington Post, only the leaders and top intelligence officers of each host country are aware of the black sites. Czech Interior Minister František Bublan admitted American intelligence officials asked a month ago if several people could be flow in from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for "secure asylum," but Prague turned down the request.
It’s also known that the CIA abducted a German citizen of Arab descent — Khaled el-Masri — in Macedonia in 2003. Unfortunately, Masri was the victim of mistaken identity, but he was still held and interrogated in Skopje for 23 days before being taken by US intelligence operatives to prison in Afghanistan.
Europe’s Guantanamo?
The Americans are also active in other parts of the Balkans. Not far from Macedonia, in the heart of Kosovo, the US government even operates a Gitmo-style camp with its own prison and landing strip around 30 kilometers east of Pristina. Originally used to house members of the Albanian independence group the UCK, Camp Bondsteel — like Guantanamo — is an overseas US enclave existing in legal limbo.
The United States has also used the Mihail-Kogalniceanu military airport on Romania’s Black Sea coast as a base for operations in Iraq since 2003. According to Human Rights Watch, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld inspected the base in October 2004. In recent months, there have been reports in Romania of terrorists being transported to unknown locations, but there has been no official confirmation. Washington’s unspoken policy in its war on terror has often been to only inform the countries directly affected. Allies in transit countries are generally left in the dark.
But in a sign that European governments are growing impatient with these clandestine operations, some no longer appear to be prepared to accept such conditions. "It’s now the EU’s turn," says one high-ranking German official. "If the reports are true, there will be plenty explaining to do." Members of the European Parliament are demanding that EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana investigate the allegations.
Up till now, the European Commission in Brussels says it has "absolutely no evidence for the existence of secret prisons" in Europe. But western intelligence agencies have more information. "We know these places exist," says one official. "But the exact details are kept extremely secret."
Forum posts
9 November 2005, 21:32
It is exceedingly interesting that the Republican Senators want to know who leaked the news that Bush was committing anti-constitutional arrogant action by making torture and abuse facilities in foreign countries by CIA agents. It is also interesting that they do not castigate Bush for his violations of our morals and norms, in order to extract information from whomever Bush designates as his prisoners for indefinite detention. The entire country knows, and now even McCain realizes that Bush used torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib, Baghram and Guantanamo and has violated legal norms with his arrest without warrant of hundreds of people. We know that Bush and Dick Cheney are opposed to any legislation preventing them from ordering torture and abuse in line with their compassionate conservatism and kill-the-damn-Muslims policy. We know that the Bush administration has an arrogance unmatched in recent decades, which resembles that of Mussolini, Hitler and Francisco Franco.
So while Republicans want to punish whoever leaked Bush’s secrets, they are remarkably uninterested in what Scooter and Turd Blossom might have done. This reminds us of the huge furor the Republican Senators made when an Intern helped relieve some of Bill Clinton’s tension. The Senators, and I remember it as though it were yesterday, were indignant, outraged, angry beyond belief that Bill would LIE. They wanted him crucified, castrated, impeached, for the grave violation of fellatio, but today some of the same senators turn a blind eye to the grave violation of Bush in taking this country to war by lies, by deceit, by spinning the truth... and they are not concerned about it. Nor are they concerned about secret CIA prisons to torture and abuse detainees illegally in violation of all of American values and legalities.
It seems that Bush has suckered the entire Republican Party with his claims to talk to his God, and that this is enough to let him do anything he damn pleases with anybody, to anybody and for his cronies profits. Why people believe this crap is a mystery.
10 November 2005, 00:16
The gang of GOP thinks it is doing just right! You, should have read the questionaire they send out to the American people what America should do in the future! Guess what? Preemptive boombing was amongst of those high ranked questions.
If a party in Europe would do this, they would find themselves in court for stir up war and hate.
But in America this is ok?!
So it is true every American who is embellishing and supporting the war or the troops is fully responsible for the men slaughter!
19 November 2005, 18:39
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
19 November 2005, 19:25
McCain or Hagel as president???
McCain is now going around defending The Bush/Cheney NeoCON lie about The Administration simply getting ’bad intelligence’ and tying himself to those that support The Big Lie.
While I had a little faith (and respect) that McCain was being genuine about trying to rid America of any connection to barbaric torture, his support for the party line about bad intelligence is insulting to Americans that have been keeping up with just how these lies have been concocted and keep changing.
Hagel if I remember right is tied to the voter fraud issue especially his connections to the voter machine manufacturers. Also I do not think he is a big believer in Bill of Rights related Freedom issues and I’ve seen no evidence he isn’t one of the fascists that supports a Police State takeover of The people.
Isn’t their any trusted Republicans left you know the ones that used to preach a small, limited, financially responsible ,HONEST ,accountable, open government one of The people, by the people, for the people, say along the lines of a Ron Paul constitutionalist?
25 November 2005, 23:02
Found some Reg planes that fly over EU & Europe among other others like: N50BH, N227SV, N168D, Mostly hired from small Co. in the USA. One just chrashed. Think it is G-1159A that ended its time in Texsas. But even Janet air from Las Vegas comes to Europe with old B-737 planes. Not all 9 of them, but one can see that Janet air is having heavy trafic in Europe too.