New revelations have surfaced regarding the alleged operation of secret prisons in Europe by the CIA, with a Swiss newspaper publishing details of an intercepted message sent by Egyptian officials. According to information obtained by the SonntagsBlick newspaper, the CIA has maintained secret prisons in Eastern Europe for several years. The newspaper claims to have acquired a copy of a faxed secret document sent by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry to the country's embassy in London.An exact copy of the fax is published in the latest edition of the SonntagsBlick, under the headline: "The Egyptians have sources which prove the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe."
According to the newspaper, the Egyptians learned through intelligence contacts that the CIA had interrogated 23 Iraqi and Afghan citizens in the secret Mihail Kogalniceanu prison near the Romanian city of Constanza on the Black Sea. The newspaper adds that similar interrogation centers are situated in the Ukraine, Kosovo, Bulgaria and Macedonia.
| Seems like a overly large number of "secret prisons", if you ask me. |
| Of course, the Egyptians could have pulled their intelligence data from media reports. |
Though revelations that the Swiss Defense Ministry conducts covert electronic surveillance may be a surprise to some, according to a document provided to ISN Security Watch by the ministry, the practice is not new. The Egyptian fax was intercepted by the Onyx system, a national security installation designed to monitor foreign communications. The system was installed in 1999 and reached full operability late last year. It is based outside of Bern and has two additional installations in other parts of the country.
| Ah, but do they have permission from a federal judge to monitor those communications? |
In response to a call placed by ISN Security Watch to the ministry, spokesperson Sebastian Hueber responded by sending a publicly-available document explaining regulations concerning electronic eavesdropping by the military. He refused further comment. The document states in one section that surveillance can only be done in connection to a specific investigation. Any information gleaned during the assignment would be handed over to the instigator of the inquiry.
The rumored existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe received significant media attention last year, but no hard evidence surfaced to prove their existence. The SonntagsBlick article is seen by observers as important in that it confirms reports by the US-based Human Rights Watch group. The organization claimed late last year that the CIA had flown detainees from its Salt Pit center in the Afghan capital Kabul to the Polish Szymany base and a second Romanian facility near Constanza.
In Germany a public discussion began last fall when it emerged that Egyptian-born German citizen Khalid al-Masri was kidnapped by the CIA in Macedonia and flown to the US Ramstein airbase in Germany. From there al-Masri was transported to Afghanistan. Al-Masri reported that he was tortured in prison for several months. After some time the CIA realized that it had mistaken him for a senior militant figure with the same name. When the case of mistaken identity was revealed, the US ambassador in Germany paid a visit to the then-minister of the interior, Otto Schilly, to deliver his country's apologies.
The subject was again raised at a meeting between the new German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice late last year. At a joint press conference, Merkel claimed that Rice had admitted that the US had made a mistake in the al-Masri case. This claim was vehemently denied by an American spokesman shortly thereafter.
European governments and the Bush administration officially deny the existence of secret prisons, with some refusing to comment on the matter. Bulgaria has said that no such prisons exist on its territory.
Francis Ferrara from the Council of Europe responded to inquiries from ISN Security Watch by saying that Marty has decided not to give further interviews until the plenary session on 26 January. The Egyptian authorities were not immediately available for comment.
The revelations in the SonntagsBlick come on the heels of a statement by Swiss investigator Dick Marty late last year in which he said that allegations that the CIA kept secret prisons and transported captives using European bases had been more or less proven. Marty responded cautiously to questions from swissinfo on the SonntagsBlick revelations. "I cannot say whether this is an authentic document, and furthermore the fax relays information confirming things we already know," he said. "But it seems inappropriate to me to speak of absolute proof. It is the kind of scoop I was expecting to see and I am sure there will be plenty more," he added.
| Gee, just like those Bush National Guard files, look hard enough and "poof', they appear! |
It is not known whether the Egyptian fax was intercepted as part of an investigation or by accident.
In an interview with Blick, Marty asked: "Why did the Swiss intelligence service intercept a communication between London and Cairo? Was the document maybe purposefully leaked to the Swiss? Did someone have an interest in the matter becoming public in Switzerland?"
"I don't know. The world of secret services is a pretty complicated world," he concluded.