http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArtic ... RISONS.xmlBy Joanne Allen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA has been hiding and interrogating al Qaeda captives at a secret facility in Eastern Europe, part of a covert global prison system that has included sites in eight countries and was set up after the September 11, 2001, attacks, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
The secret network included "several democracies in Eastern Europe" as well as Thailand and Afghanistan, the newspaper reported, but it did not publish the names of the European countries at the request of senior U.S. officials.
U.S. government officials declined comment on the report, but it was likely to stir up fresh criticism of the Bush administration's treatment of prisoners in its declared war on terrorism since the September 11 attacks.
Russia and Bulgaria immediately denied any facility was there. Thailand also denied it was host to such a facility.
The newspaper, which said its report was based on information from U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement, said the existence and locations of the facilities were 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.
The CIA has not acknowledged the existence of a secret prison network, the newspaper said.
Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, principal deputy to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, declined to comment when asked about the report at a news conference in San Antonio where he delivered a speech about intelligence reforms.
"I'm not here to talk about that," he said.
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 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.
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. Continued ...
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