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| (file photo) Thomas Hammarberg, the human rights commissioner for the Council of Europe. |
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Poland, Romania and Lithuania hosted secret prisons for "enhanced interrogation," the body says
- Human Rights Commission's Thomas Hammarberg says "the full truth" must be established
- CIA officials have acknowledged the extraordinary rendition program but refused to disclose details
- Records emerging from Moammar Gadhafi's regime in Libya contain potential revelations
Paris (CNN)
-- The human rights commissioner for the Council of Europe urged countries that
have hosted secret CIA prisons to come clean Monday, as the tenth anniversary
of 9/11 approaches.
Thomas
Hammarberg said Poland, Romania and Lithuania were among at least seven
countries that hosted "black sites" for "enhanced
interrogation" during the "war on terror."
"Darkness
still enshrouds those who authorized and ran the black sites on European
territories," he said. "The full truth must now be established and
guarantees given that such forms of co-operation will never be repeated."
CIA
officials have acknowledged the rendition program, but refused to discuss
details and denied violating any laws. Efforts to challenge the agency and get
details about it in U.S. courts have been turned aside.
Hammarberg's
statement comes as documents seized from Moammar Gadhafi's compound in Libya
shed light on the program of extraordinary rendition, or questioning of terror
suspects in third-party countries where U.S. law does not apply.
RELATED TOPICS
CNN saw a
March 6, 2004, CIA letter to Libyan officials about Abdel Hakim Belhaj, a
former jihadist with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and now a senior
commander in the anti-Gadhafi forces.
It
concerned the Malaysian government's arrest of Abdullah al-Sadiq, Belhaj's nom
de guerre for his rendition. A CIA officer said the man and his pregnant wife were
being placed on a commercial flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to London via
Bangkok and then onto Libya.
"We
are planning to arrange to take control of the pair in Bangkok and place them
on our aircraft for a flight to your country," the officer wrote.
Belhaj
fought for the Taliban in Afghanistan, but left after their fall in 2001 and
was arrested in Malaysia in 2004. After some questioning by the CIA, he was
sent back to Libya and jailed.
The Council
of Europe's Hammarberg said the CIA had held "high-value detainees,"
including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in Poland, between
2002 and 2003.
The Polish
site closed and a new secret prison opened in Romania in 2003, Hammarberg
charged, and existed for over two years. Lithuania also hosted two sites, he
said.
Polish
prosecutors and Lithuanian lawmakers have investigated the phenomenon, but
Romania has shown "little genuine will to uncover the whole truth,"
Hammarberg charged.
"Effective
investigations are imperative and long overdue," he said.
Neither the
CIA nor the European countries named by Hammarberg immediately responded.
The Council
of Europe is a 47-member group that promotes democracy and human rights on the
continent.
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