Brussels, 28/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - A number of member states have yet to provide satisfactory information on their possible complicity with the CIA in its secret flights in Europe as the European Parliament (EP) has asked them to do since 2007. A hearing held in the EP civil liberties committee on Tuesday 27 March noted new developments on these secret CIA detention programmes, especially in Denmark, Lithuania, Romania and Poland, in which country a former intelligence chief was indicted on that same day. According to Amnesty International, a UK investigation was suddenly terminated in 2011. It has been the Council of Europe and the press which, from 2005, have gradually revealed the collusion of some European countries and the CIA in the interrogation, and sometimes torture, of suspected members of al-Qaeda. The EP set up a special committee and called on those member states suspected of complicity to provide explanations on all allegations of secret detention. Five years on, Hélène Flautre (Greens/EFA, France) is to ensure continuation of the investigation, with the EP due to vote on her own initiative report in September.
According to Amnesty International, since 2007, the Lithuanian government has admitted that there were secret CIA prisons within its borders; a building in Bucharest has also been identified as a likely site of CIA detention; a Polish investigation has been launched on the secret sites but has come to nought; and a link has been established between Denmark and Finland and Lithuania in published information on secret flights, but neither Copenhagen nor Helsinki has been able to conclude its investigations. (SP/transl.rt)