EU lawmakers set to go to Poland for investigating CIA charges

European lawmakers probing alleged US secret service activities in Europe are about to leave for Poland to find out whether the country has hosted clandestine US-run detention centres, the European Parliament said Monday. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are currently scrutinizing charges that the CIA ran secret camps on European soil to question terror suspects abetted by national governments.

The EU delegation is scheduled to meet with government officials, journalists and representatives of non-governmental organizations on November 8-10.

Talks would be held with Undersecretary of State in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister Marek Pasionek and with Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, head of Poland's Foreign Intelligence Agency (AW) between 2002 and 2004.

US President George W Bush in September for the first time acknowledged that the CIA was running secret prisons for holding and interrogating high-level al-Qaeda figures that have been captured since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US.

But he did not give in to European calls to make the location of the camps public. EU lawmakers also pressed national governments to come clean about the extent of their involvement in the issue.

Clandestine detention centres, secret flights via or from Europe to countries where suspects could face torture, or extraordinary renditions would all breach the continent's human-rights conventions.

Following a fact-finding mission to Romania last month, MEPs said the country continued to be suspected of having hosted clandestine CIA camps.

Europe's top human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, earlier this year charged that Romania and Poland had hosted clandestine CIA camps. Bucharest and Warsaw, however, deny the allegation.

The 46-member council, which is independent from the EU, is conducting a separate inquiry into the CIA charges.

Its final report on a six-month-long inquiry into the allegations against the CIA said that several European states had helped the US carrying out "extraordinary rendition" flights, the US practice of transporting detainees to other states for interrogation.
Source:rawstory.com