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Red Cross in intense talks with US over secret jails

Posted on: Friday, 9 December 2005, 14:01 CST

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - The Red Cross is pushing the United States to give it access to prisoners held in secret jails as part of the U.S. war on terror, it said on Friday.

"We have said that undisclosed detention is a major concern for us," Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told a news conference.

"We are already visiting very many detainees under U.S. authorities in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan ... We continue to be in an intense dialogue with them with the aim of getting access to all people detained in the framework of the so-called war on terror," he said.

Human rights groups accuse the CIA of running secret prisons in eastern Europe and covertly transporting detainees. They say incommunicado detention often leads to torture.

John Bellinger, the U.S. State Department's legal adviser, acknowledged to reporters in Geneva on Thursday that the ICRC does not have access to all detainees held by U.S. forces, but refused to discuss alleged secret detention centers.

The ICRC has been pressing the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush for two years for information about and access to what the agency calls "an unknown number of people captured as part of the so-called global war on terror and held in undisclosed locations."

A Polish newspaper on Friday quoted an analyst of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch organization as saying Poland had been the heart of the CIA's secret detention network in Europe until recently.

"Poland was the main base for CIA interrogations in Europe, while Romania played more of a role in the transfer of detained prisoners," analyst Marc Garlasco was quoted by the daily Gazeta Wyborcza as saying in an interview.

He said the allegations were based on information from CIA sources and other documents obtained by Human Rights Watch. "We have leads, circumstantial evidence to check but it's too early to reveal them," Garlasco said.

Human Rights Watch said in a statement, however, that it was still investigating CIA operations in eastern Europe.

"Human Rights Watch has not reached conclusions about CIA operations in Eastern Europe," it said in a statement issued by its New York office.

"Human Rights Watch has collected information that CIA airplanes traveling from Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004 made direct flights to remote airfields in Poland and Romania," it said in a statement issued by its New York office.

Poland and Romania deny hosting secret CIA jails and the United States has declined to comment on the reports.

RELOCATED

Garlasco was quoted as saying the CIA had set up two detention centers in Poland, which were closed shortly after the Washington Post published an article about secret prisons last month.

The Polish centers held a quarter of the 100 detainees estimated held in such camps worldwide, he said.

Garlasco was not immediately available for comment.

Reports of secret jails in Poland and Romania have caused controversy on both sides of the Atlantic and dogged U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's European trip this week.

U.S. broadcaster ABC News this week reported that the United States held al Qaeda suspects at two secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe until last month, when 11 prisoners were relocated to a site somewhere in north Africa.

Poland is one of Washington's leading allies in Europe, where it irked EU heavyweights Germany and France by sending troops to join the U.S.-led war with Iraq.

European countries responded to public pressure by seeking answers from Washington before Rice's trip, but appeared reassured by her defense that the United States respected their sovereignty and acted within the law in its war on terrorism.

United Nations human rights investigators on Friday chided "many states" they said were trying to justify torture.

All human rights are inalienable rights of every person, 33 experts said in a joint statement. "They cannot be brushed aside by governments when they become 'inconvenient'."

They did not name countries bending the rules. Along with the accusations about secret CIA jails, a U.N. investigator said last week torture was widespread in China.

"Torture and any form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment are prohibited in all circumstances, including during a state of emergency," the investigators said.

Source: REUTERS

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