HUNGARY: The Council of Europe has given its member nations three months to allay fears that the CIA is secretly using European airports to transport or detain terror suspects.
Terry Davis, the secretary general of the rights watchdog, has written to its 46 member states to ask if they have laws preventing the covert transportation and detention of prisoners, while one of his colleagues is combing satellite images for suspect sites.
"I asked how laws prevent such things, and how such laws are observed," Mr Davis said yesterday in Romania, one of the countries Human Rights Watch suspects of accepting CIA planes carrying prisoners and, perhaps, playing host to secret prisons.
Dick Marty, the Swiss official who is compiling a report on the alleged "black bases", said that if they existed, they would probably be small and hard to find.
"I don't think it would be possible to set up a centre like Guantanamo in Europe," he said, referring to the vast US prison for alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. "If Romanian officials tell me they are not hosting a Guantanamo, I trust them."
He added that Romania could host "small centres with one or two detainees being kept temporarily for interrogation".
"It's also possible that CIA planes stay 10, 20 or 30 days on Romanian soil. That's very hard to find out," he said.
Mr Davis expects replies from all the countries by February 21st, while Mr Marty hopes to deliver his report in January.
"With the help of precise geographic co-ordinates which I have obtained, it would be possible to obtain high-definition satellite images taken between the beginning of 2002 and now," to look for the construction of tell-tale watchtowers or barbed-wire fences, Mr Marty said.
Countries across Europe have confirmed that planes believed to be operated by the CIA have landed periodically at their airports, but they have also denied the existence of any secret prisons on their territory.
After meeting Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in Budapest yesterday, Hungarian prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany denied reports that his country may be the site of such a facility.
"Hungary has not been and is not a place with any secret CIA facilities, and if I received a request to set up such a places it would be categorically refused," he told The Irish Times.