Date Posted: Wednesday, November 02, 2005

The CIA declined to comment on a report saying it was detaining alleged al-Qaeda members at secret prisons in Eastern Europe and other locations overseas.

WASHINGTON, Nov 2 (MASNET & News Agencies) - The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) declined to comment on a newspaper report saying the agency has been hiding and interrogating alleged al-Qaeda captives at secret prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

The prisons, known as "black sites," are, or have been, located in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and "several democracies in eastern Europe," the daily said, quoting U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the system, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Asked about the report published Wednesday, a CIA spokeswoman replied: "We decline to comment."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "I'm not going to get into specific intelligence activities. I will say that the president's most important responsibility is to protect the American people."

The secret detention centers were set up after the September 11 attacks and are known only to a handful of officials, The Washington Post reported.

The names of the eastern European countries were withheld by the Post "at the request of senior U.S. officials," who argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere.

Russia and Bulgaria immediately denied any facility was there. Thailand also denied it was host to such a facility, reports Reuters.

The Central Intelligence Agency has sent more than 100 suspects to the hidden global internment network, said the daily, indicating that the number was a rough estimate and did not include prisoners picked up from Iraq.

About 30 of the detainees, considered major terrorism suspects, have been held at black sites financed and managed by the CIA in Eastern Europe and elsewhere - two locations in Thailand and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were closed in 2003 and 2004, the daily said.

They are isolated from the outside world, have no recognized legal rights and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or see them, the sources told the newspaper.

More than 70 other less important detainees - with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value, some of whom were originally interned at black sites, have been delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, under a process known as "rendition," the daily added.

The State Department has issued human rights reports accusing Egypt, Jordan and Morocco of abusing prisoners.

The Post, citing several former and current intelligence and other U.S. government officials, said the CIA used such detention centers abroad because in the United States it is illegal to hold prisoners in such isolation, reports Reuters.

The CIA and the White House have dissuaded the U.S. Congress from asking questions in open testimony about the facilities or their conditions, the daily said.

"Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long," the Post said.

The covert prison system is "known only to a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country," said the newspaper, which pieced together the "contours" of the CIA detention program over the past two years.

The Bush administration's policy toward prisoners taken in Afghanistan and Iraq has come under heavy criticism at home and abroad. Inmate abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison was strongly condemned in the Muslim world and among U.S. allies while many have called for more openness about those being held at a U.S. navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, reports Reuters.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spurned a request by U.N. human rights investigators and denied them the opportunity to meet with detainees at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects, the news agency reports.