Modbee.comRomania base focus of secret prison probe by Europeans
MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIR BASE, Romania - In a weedy field on this wind-swept military base, Romanians in greasy combat fatigues tinker with unmanned drone aircraft near a ragged lineup of rusting MiG-29 fighter jets. There's not an American in sight, but the sprawling Soviet-era facility has become a key focus of a European investigation into allegations the CIA operated secret prisons where suspected terrorists were interrogated.
Top Romanian leaders and the Pentagon vehemently deny that the Mihail Kogalniceanu base in the country's southeast ever hosted a covert detention center, and the Romanians insist the United States never used it as a transit point for al-Qaida captives. "It's impossible for something like that to have happened on this base," Lt. Cmdr. Florin Putanu, the base's No. 2 officer, angrily told The Associated Press in a recent interview. But the compound, heavily used by American forces in 2001-2003 to transport troops and equipment to Afghanistan and Iraq, and scheduled to be handed over to the U.S. military early next year, is under increasing scrutiny.
Ioan Mircea Pascu, Romania's defense minister in 2001-2004, told the AP that parts of Mihail Kogalniceanu were off-limits to Romanian authorities, and the country's main intelligence agency said it has no jurisdiction there. Pascu said he could not determine whether prisoners were ever held at the installation, but he conceded that planes flying captives to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may have made stopovers in Romania. On Tuesday, Swiss lawmaker Dick Marty - heading the probe by the Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights watchdog - said he was trying to acquire past satellite images of the base and Poland's Szczytno-Szymany airport. Both airfields, Human Rights Watch has alleged, were likely sites for clandestine CIA prisons. Marty has asked the Brussels, Belgium-based Eurocontrol air safety organization to provide details of 31 suspected aircraft that landed in Europe and, according to Human Rights Watch, had direct or indirect links to the CIA. Several of the flights stopped at the Romanian and Polish sites, the group said, basing its information on flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004. It said one of the alleged CIA flights that transited Mihail Kogalniceanu on Sept. 22, 2003, originated in Kabul, Afghanistan. Other airports that might have been used by CIA aircraft in some capacity include Palma de Mallorca in Spain, Larnaca in Cyprus and Shannon in Ireland, as well as the U.S. air base at Ramstein, Germany, Marty said. Investigations into alleged CIA landings or flyovers are under way in Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and there have been unconfirmed reports in Macedonia and Malta. Officials in ex-communist Romania - like Poland, a key U.S. ally in the global war on terrorism - have reacted with outrage to the suggestion that Mihail Kogalniceanu may have been used to transport, hide or interrogate suspected terrorists.
Secret detention centers, the alleged existence of which was first reported earlier this month by The Washington Post, would be illegal in both nations and could deal a huge setback to Romania's drive to join the European Union in 2007. The CIA has refused to comment on the European investigation. The U.S. Department of Defense "did not and does not detain enemy combatants in Romania," a spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, told AP. He said the Pentagon would not disclose what countries the U.S. military might fly over "or make brief refueling stops in during detainee movements. Doing so would constitute a safety risk to both the detainees and our troops."
Note EU-Digest: Hopefully EU member, candidate, and potential candidate states understand that membership in the EU entails adhering to the laws of the EU, which does not allow human rights violations, the death penalty, torture or illegal mercenary support to other nations. If and when investigation show that these EU principles were, or are being violated by potential or actual EU members, or by other nations operating on EU territory, the EU Commission must act forcefully to correct the situation.
