Rights group backs prisons report

NEW YORK, June 13 (UPI) -- Human Rights Watch Monday welcomed the new Council of Europe report on the CIA's secret operation of prisons in Poland and Romania.

The report, released Monday, said the Central Intelligence Agency had run illegal jails for terror suspects at several different centers in Poland and Romania, two former Soviet satellite states, from 2003 to 2005.

"The result of an investigation initiated in November 2005 by the council's Parliamentary Assembly under the leadership of assembly member and Swiss senator Dick Marty, the report provides evidence confirming allegations first made by Human Rights Watch in 2005," HRW said in a statement.

"Today's report confirms that Poland and Romania helped the CIA operate illegal detention sites on their territory in violation of international law," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counter-terrorism director at Human Rights Watch. "It is now clear that U.S. officials illegally conspired with intelligence officials in several European countries to 'disappear,' interrogate and illegally transfer terrorism suspects, flouting basic human rights norms."

The report suggests that President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland and former President Ion Iliescu of Romania authorized the secret detentions.

HRW said the report "provides new information -- including from cross-referenced testimonies of over 30 current and former members of intelligence services in the United States and Europe -- about how the secret program operated in Poland and Romania."

The Human Rights Watch statement said the group believed terror suspects "held in Poland were likely transferred there from Afghanistan in late 2003 and early 2004. Other detainees held in CIA custody in Afghanistan were transferred to military custody, and subsequently to Guantanamo."