Report details secret CIA prisons

BRUSSELS, June 8 (UPI) -- A report released in Europe Friday backs up charges the CIA operated illegal prisons in Poland and Romania to interrogate high-level terror suspects.

Initiated by a European human rights body, the report accuses Poland and Romania of violating international law by helping the CIA operate prisons where it says suspects were subjected to "interrogation techniques tantamount to torture."

The report contains new information about how the secret program worked plus aviation records of CIA-operated planes, with detainees landing at remote airstrips in Poland and Romania.

One such flight may have taken terrorism suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from Afghanistan to Poland.

The new report is the result of an investigation by the Council of Europe begun in November 2005 following charges made by 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," says Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch.