The investigation into CIA secret prisons reopens in Europe

The European Parliament resumes investigations into alleged CIA prisons in a number of European states, including Romania.

Mihai Pelin, 12.02.2015, 13:29

The European Parliament on Wednesday decided to reopen investigations into CIA secret prisons in member states, including Romania. The decision comes in the aftermath of a report by the US Senate on the employment of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency. The December 2014 report uncovers new facts, confirming the suspicion that several EU member states, the authorities there and their intelligence services were complicit in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition and detention programme, sometimes using corrupt practices such paying substantial sums of money for cooperation, say the European MPs.

A resolution passed on Wednesday by the European Parliament again calls on European states to investigate accusations of rendition and secret prisons, but also to start criminal investigations into the responsible parties. The task of resuming the investigation and inform the European Parliament of the results falls to the committees on civil liberty, foreign affairs and human rights, which have a year to draw up their report.

As part of the investigation, a parliamentary mission will travel to a number of European states to collect information and evidence about possible bribery and other corrupt practices associated with the CIA programme in EU states, including Lithuania, Poland and Romania, all accused of having hosted secret CIA detention centres.

The European Parliament also warns that the states in question should refrain from interfering with these investigations and with national judicial inquests, by abusively invoking national security concerns and unjustifiably classifying certain documents classified. The accusations of illegal detention and rendition using EU countries were previously investigated by a parliamentary committee in 2006. Since then, the European MPs have repeatedly called for more extensive inquiries. In Romania, a parliamentary investigation established in 2008 that the country had hosted no detention centre for the CIA.

In October 2013, the European Parliament passed a resolution in which it again called on the authorities in Bucharest to open an “independent, impartial, detailed and effective” investigation into Romania’s involvement in the US secret prison programme. Prime minister Victor Ponta replied at the time that the authorities would analyse the resolution and do everything that is normal at a European and international level.