Berlin – Washington says it needs more time to respond to allegations of CIA secret jails and prisoner flights in Europe, the European Union’s top justice official said Monday.
EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini warned that any EU nation found to have hosted a covert jail could be punished. Concerns about alleged CIA activities in Europe have led to investigations in a half-dozen countries.
The Council of Europe, the continent’s main human-rights watchdog, also is looking into the reports, and EU justice official Jonathan Faul raised the issue last week with White House and State Department representatives, Frattini said.
“They told him, ‘Give us the appropriate time to evaluate the situation.’ Right now, there is no response,” Frattini said.
The CIA has declined to comment on the investigations.
Frattini said voting rights could be suspended if an EU member allowed the CIA to set up a clandestine detention center for interrogating terrorism suspects – an unprecedented punishment for the 25-nation bloc.
A secret jail would violate the European Convention on Human Rights.
Frattini said suspending voting rights would be justified under an EU treaty provision stipulating that the bloc is founded on the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms and the rule of law and that a persistent breach of these principles can be punished.
Allegations that the CIA hid and interrogated key al-Qaeda suspects at Soviet-era compounds in Eastern Europe were first reported Nov. 2.
A day after that report, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch said it had evidence indicating that the CIA flew suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania.
