EU Nations Implicated In Prison Probe

Investigator: 14 European Nations Colluded With CIA On Secret Prisons

(AP)  Similarly, Marty said he believed the Szymany airport in northeastern Poland was used for a rendition flight in September 2003.

Officials in Romania and Poland denied the allegations Wednesday.

A parallel investigation by the European Parliament has said data show there have been more than 1,000 clandestine CIA flights stopping on European territory since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Officials said it was not clear if or how many detainees were on board, and have not shed any light on allegations of CIA secret prisons.

Allegations that CIA agents shipped prisoners through European airports to secret detention centers, including compounds in eastern Europe, were first reported in November by The Washington Post.

Poland's prime minister denied Wednesday that CIA planes carrying terror suspects ever stopped or dropped off prisoners in Poland.

"This is slander and it's not based on any facts," Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz told reporters in Warsaw.

Former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski admitted he had heard of a few cases of secret landings by CIA planes in Poland, saying it was "natural" in the global fight against terrorism.

Romeo Raicu, head of Romania's parliamentary committee overseeing foreign intelligence services, told The Associated Press: "There is no evidence there were such detention bases in Romania."

He noted that agreements with the United States and NATO allow their aircraft to land in Romania and to fly over Romanian territory.

"The responsibility for what those planes transport is not Romania's responsibility," he said.

Britain said it had granted two of four U.S. rendition requests.

The first concerned Mohammed Rashid, a man later sentenced in the United States to seven years in prison in connection with the bombing of a Pan Am flight in 1982.

A second was to transport Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali via London's Gatwick airport. He was sentenced to life in 2001 for his role in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.

"I have to say, the Council of Europe report has absolutely nothing new in it," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.

Clandestine prisons and secret flights via or from Europe to countries where suspects could face torture would breach the continent's human rights treaties, including the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Council of Europe has no power to punish countries for breaching the treaty other than terminating their membership in the organization. Based on irrefutable evidence, the European Union might be able to suspend the voting rights of a country found to have breached the convention.