US: The CIA is holding terrorist suspects in secret prisons in eastern Europe, using interrogation and detention methods that are illegal in the host countries, according to a US newspaper.
The Washington Post reports that the prisons are part of a global network of CIA "black sites" that have held more than 100 suspects in Thailand, Afghanistan and a number of eastern European democracies since September 11th, 2001. The paper declined to identify the eastern European countries at the request of US officials and it is not clear if any of the countries involved are in the European Union.
The methods of detention and interrogation described in the report are inconsistent with human rights standards that all EU member-states are obliged to uphold.
Citing "US and foreign officials", the paper says that detainees are held in isolation, sometimes in dark, underground cells and that they are not allowed to communicate with lawyers or anyone else outside the prison.
CIA interrogators use "enhanced interrogation techniques" that are forbidden by US military law and the United Nations Convention against Torture.
The techniques include "waterboarding", in which a detainee is made to believe he is drowning.
Intelligence officers told the paper that the CIA set up its network of secret prisons overseas because it is illegal to hold prisoners inside the US in such isolation.
The prisons are part of the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism which has also seen suspects snatched by US personnel and passed on for interrogation to friendly governments in Afghanistan, Egypt, Morocco and Jordan, a process known as "rendition".
The US insists that none of the targets of "rendition" have been tortured, but Afghanistan, Egypt, Morocco and Jordan have been condemned repeatedly by human rights groups for routinely torturing prisoners.
The Washington Post says that only a handful of officials in the US and the most senior intelligence officers in host countries know where the CIA's "black sites" are located. The paper says that some CIA officials have long believed that the policy of holding suspects in secret, possibly for the rest of their lives, is unsustainable.
"We never sat down, as far as I know, and came up with a grand strategy. Everything was very reactive. That's how you get to a situation where you pick people up, send them into a netherworld and don't say, 'What are we going to do with them afterwards?'," a former intelligence officer told the paper.
The US senate voted overwhelmingly last month to outlaw cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner held in US custody, regardless of where they are held. Vice-president Dick Cheney and CIA director Porter Goss have asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from the legislation before it is passed.