Swiss Dynamite on Secret CIA Prisons in Europe

Dick Marty, chief investigator for the Council of Europe into the prison allegations, is cautious about the Sonntagsblick's revelations.

"I cannot say whether it is an authentic document or not, and furthermore the fax relays information confirming things we already knew," he told swissinfo.

"But it seems inappropriate to me to talk of absolute proof. It is the kind of scoop I was expecting to see and I'm sure there will be plenty more."

Marty reckons that if the document turns out to be authentic, it will just be another proving that some governments in Europe are not revealing everything they know.

A bigger concern in his view is that a sensitive and secret official report was not only leaked, but that it also raised a few questions.

"How is it that the Swiss intelligence services are intercepting messages between Cairo and the Egyptian embassy in London," he asked. "Or is it another foreign service that passed on the information to Switzerland and then to the Sonntagsblick?"

Press & publishing

Swiss reporters face five years' jail

Bojan Pancevski in Zurich
Tuesday January 10, 2006


The Swiss journalists who published classified documents indicating their government had knowledge of secret CIA prisons across eastern Europe are now facing five years in prison.
The editor in chief of the SonntagsBlick tabloid, Christoph Grenacher, and the two journalists who wrote the story, Sandro Brotz and Beat Jost, are being investigated on charges of revealing military secrets by prosecutors working for the High Council of the Swiss Army .

The SonntagsBlick report was based on a highly classified fax allegedly intercepted by Swiss intelligence late last year as it was sent by Egypt's foreign ministry to the Egyptian embassy in London.

According to an intelligence report leaked to the SonntagsBlick the fax was read by the Swiss military surveillance centre in Zimmerwald through the country's state-of-the-art satellite monitoring system, Onyx.

The leaked intelligence report claims that the intercepted fax indicated the existence of secret CIA prisons in eastern Europe; listing Ukraine, Romania, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria as definite sites.

The Swiss military penal code stipulates that revealing official army secrets is punishable by up to five years in jail or a fine.

Mr Grenacher admitted to knowing that publication could result in punishment. However, he said: "As soon as we made sure the document was authentic, I made a final decision to go public, without 'ifs' and 'buts'.

"We are not only servants of the state. As journalists with SonntagsBlick, we see ourselves also as keepers of the state. As maintainers of and fighters for the constitutional state.

"We dislike being muzzled as much as we dislike secret prisons."

Socialist party spokeswomen Claudine Godat supported the actions of the SonntagsBlick saying that the contents of the fax were far more worrying than the "indiscretion" of the paper.

Swiss investigator: CIA secret prisons document must be followed up

By JAN SLIVA | Associated Press
January 10, 2006

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The head of a European investigation into alleged CIA prisons in Europe said Tuesday the purported Egyptian government document naming countries where such prisons existed is a new lead which must be followed up.

But Dick Marty, a Swiss senator leading the probe on behalf of the Council of Europe, said it was still not clear the document _ a fax reportedly sent by satellite transmission from Egypt's Foreign Ministry to its embassy in London _ was genuine.

The document's existence was reported Sunday by the Swiss weekly SonnstagsBlick. The fax, intercepted Nov. 15 by Swiss intelligence, reportedly said Egypt had confirmed through its own sources that the U.S. intelligence agency had held 23 terror suspects from Iraq and Afghanistan at a military base in Romania.

It also said there were similar U.S. detention centers in Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria, according to the Swiss newspaper, which printed a copy of a Swiss summary of the fax.

Marty also said he wondered how Swiss intelligence intercepted a fax allegedly sent from Egypt to London. "It's the first time these allegations come directly from an Arab country," he said.

The Strasbourg, France-based Council of Europe began its investigation after allegations surfaced in November that U.S. agents interrogated key al-Qaida suspects at clandestine prisons in Eastern Europe and transported some suspects to other countries via Europe.

New York-based Human Rights Watch identified Romania and Poland as possible sites of secret U.S.-run detention facilities. Both countries have denied involvement.

European officials say secret prisons would violate the continent's human rights laws. Marty is to present his findings to the council's parliamentary assembly later this month.

In Bern, The Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office on Tuesday opened an investigation into the leak.

The Federal Prosecutor's Office is investigating a possible breach of official secrets by the editor of SonntagsBlick as well as two journalists at the newspaper, Prosecutor's spokesman Hansjuerg Mark Wiedmer told The Associated Press.

Publishing a secret document can be a violation of Swiss law punishable by a fine or imprisonment. Switzerland's Defense Ministry has already launched an investigation into the leak.

Swiss probe leaked fax on alleged CIA prisons

Wed Jan 11, 2006 12:11 PM ET

ZURICH (Reuters) - Switzerland launched a probe on Wednesday into the leak of an Egyptian diplomatic fax intercepted by its secret service that appeared to lend credence to allegations the CIA had secret prisons in Eastern Europe.

Romania, Poland and others have denied they let the United States hold terrorism suspects on their territory, while the U.S. government has neither denied nor confirmed accusations of secret jails first made by the Washington Post last November.

On Sunday, the Swiss SonntagsBlick newspaper published a copy of a fax sent to Egypt's embassy in London from Cairo which said Egypt had heard through sources that Iraqi and Afghan citizens had been interrogated at a U.S. base in Romania.

The Swiss government, which defended the actions of its secret service in intercepting the message, said the federal prosecutor as well as military authorities had begun preliminary investigations over the leak.

"Somebody who acts like this is hurting the reputation and the credibility of our country. Moreover, they are punishable by law," the government said in a statement.

It said the secret service had not violated any international laws and had acted in "line with its mandate".

In the fax, Egyptian officials said they had also heard of bases in Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria. The fax also quoted newspaper reports saying the United States had transported prisoners to Poland.

Several European countries have sought explanations from the United States over the suspected use of bases on the continent for covert prisoner transfers.

EU parliament to launch CIA probe - lawmaker

Wed Jan 11, 2006 5:58 PM GMT

By Darren Ennis

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Political leaders of the European Parliament will give the green light on Thursday for an investigation into allegations that the CIA operated prisons in the European Union, one leader told Reuters.

Leaders of the Parliament's seven political groups and President Josep Borrell will meet on Thursday to finalise details of the investigation, said Brian Crowley, Irish MEP and leader of the Union for Europe of Nations (UEN) Group.

"We will set the terms of reference for a committee of inquiry and the practical parameters of the investigation," Crowley said in an interview.

He said the inquiry would start immediately after it was formally ratified by the parliament next week and it would be expected to report back within 12 weeks at the latest. The committee would have no legal powers.

"What we hope to do is gather enough evidence which will be the catalyst for real action on the issue on an international level," Crowley said.

The European Parliament inquiry is to work in tandem with an investigation by the Council of Europe, the 46-nation human rights watchdog, in to whether EU countries allowed themselves to be used for the illegal transport and detention of prisoners.

European lawmakers have accused leaders of the 25-country bloc of failing to press the United States hard enough on media reports that the CIA was running secret jails in Eastern Europe and covertly flying prisoners through EU airports.

The controversy eased in December after several EU countries declared themselves satisfied with assurances by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice while on a trip to Europe that U.S. treatment of detainees was within international law.

Crowley said the committee would consist of 46 members with German lawmaker and chairman of the Parliament's foreign affairs committee, Elmar Brok, expected to lead it.

"We will liaise with the Council of Europe, but we hope to get to the bottom of this issue ourselves with member states expected to come forward with evidence," Crowley said.

The move comes on the eve of a meeting of justice and home affairs ministers of the 25 EU member states in Vienna.

Whereas the CIA issue has raised a lot of concern in the EU, it is not officially on the agenda of the ministerial meeting, said a spokesman from the Austrian presidency of the EU. The issue is expected to come up when German Chancellor Angela Merkel meets U.S. President George Bush in Washington on Friday.

(Additional reporting by Ingrid Melander)

Walter,
Thanks for keeping us up to date on things that will probably never make US media reports.

(and a bm too)

Last Updated: Friday, 13 January 2006, 22:35 GMT

Europe 'complicit over CIA jails'

A Swiss senator carrying out an inquiry into claims the CIA has run illegal secret detention centres in Europe has said he has no doubt they exist.

Dick Marty accused the US of violating human rights and attacked European nations for their "shocking" passivity in the face of such violations.

He is due to give a preliminary report to the Council of Europe on 23 January.
Speaking to journalists in Switzerland, he said he was personally convinced the US had undertaken illegal activities in Europe in transporting and detaining prisoners.

However, he acknowledged he had yet to produce concrete proof and said he expected his inquiry to last another 12 months.

"The question is: was the CIA really working in Europe?" he said. "I believe we can say today, without a doubt, yes."

Washington's policy "respects neither human rights nor the Geneva Conventions", he said.

He cited as evidence the case of Egyptian cleric and terror suspect Osama Mustafa Hassan, also known as Abu Omar, who was allegedly kidnapped by CIA agents from Milan in 2003 and flown to Egypt for interrogation.

'Dirty work'

Mr Marty also criticised European governments for failing to act when it seemed clear they knew about the US policy.

"It's not possible to transport people from one place to another in such a manner without the secret services knowing about it," he said.


"What was shocking was the passivity with which we all, in Europe, have welcomed these things.

"Europeans should be less hypocritical and not turn a blind eye. There are those who do the dirty work abroad but there are also those who know when they should close their eyes when that dirty work is being done."

Mr Marty said it was unfair to single out for criticism Romania and Poland, both named in media reports as possible sites for the centres. Both have denied involvement.

Governments across Europe had been "willingly silent", he said, and it was now time for Europeans to decide whether they would continue to tolerate the illegal actions of the CIA.

The BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Bern says Mr Marty's comments come amid growing controversy within Switzerland over the leak of classified information from the Swiss intelligence service.

The documents appear to confirm the existence of secret CIA interrogation centres in several Eastern European countries, she says.


The US has refused to confirm or deny the allegations over secret prisons. It has denied using or condoning torture.

Mr Marty was asked to lead the inquiry by the Council of Europe, the continent's human rights watchdog, after the claims surfaced late last year.




COUNCIL OF EUROPE
Founded in 1949 and based in Strasbourg, France
Forty-six members, 21 of them from Central and Eastern Europe
Set up to defend human rights, parliamentary democracy and the rule of law
Acts as human rights watchdog for Europe
Oversees the European Court of Human Rights
Comprises a decision-making committee of ministers and 630-member parliamentary assembly

Government defends stance on CIA prisons

swissinfo January 15, 2006 1:56 PM


One week after media revelations the Swiss authorities allegedly knew of the existence of secret CIA prisons in Europe, three ministers have spoken out.

They have rejected criticism from the Council of Europe's investigator that they and other European governments have failed to tackle the White House over the issue.

Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey told the NZZ am Sonntag on Sunday that the information contained in a secret document published last week by the SonntagsBlick tabloid was not spectacular.

The document was a leaked report about an Egyptian fax intercepted by the Swiss intelligence services that claimed that the Americans were operating a secret prison in Romania to interrogate suspected terrorists. The Egyptians also allegedly had proof of detention centres in other parts of eastern Europe.

Calmy-Rey said the report showed that the secret services had informed the authorities correctly. For the foreign minister, the real problem was that the document had been made public and that the leak had damaged the Swiss government's credibility.

The foreign ministry has spent the last week carrying out damage control, patching up its relationships with Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Kosovo and the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. These countries and regions were all specifically named in the secret report.

"The countries whose names were revealed weren't particularly happy," Calmy-Rey told the Matin Dimanche newspaper.

Passive

She also defended the government against accusations it had remained too passive in the CIA prisons' affair.

On Friday, the Swiss senator heading a European investigation into the CIA prisons, Dick Marty, said United States anti-terror policies contravened human rights law. He claimed that Switzerland and other European nations were being too passive towards such policies.

Marty said that European countries had been "complicit" in the CIA's alleged activities. "What was shocking was the passivity with which we all, in Europe, have welcomed these things," he added.

For the Social Democrat foreign minister, there has still been no proof of the existence of the prisons though, contrary to Marty's claims. "[Given the situation,] we have done all we can," she told the NZZ.

The Swiss authorities have demanded - unsuccessfully - for explanations from the Americans according to Calmy-Rey, who added that Switzerland has repeated its request a number of times in no uncertain fashion and will continue to do so.

Holy See

The Swiss finance minister, Hans-Rudolf Merz, and the interior minister, Pascal Minister, took time out on Saturday to criticise their Radical Party colleague Marty.

For Couchepin, the government must ensure good relations with other countries, including the United States.

"I don't think Switzerland is the moral guardian of the world," he told Swiss public radio. "Switzerland defends moral principles, but we aren't the Holy See for human rights."

Merz reckoned that Marty had information that the government had no knowledge of to make his claims. The finance minister said the government could not speak out in the same way since it had too little facts available until now.

The results of a poll published on Sunday by the SonntagsBlick show that three out of four Swiss believe that the government should make a formal protest to the US authorities about the CIA prisons.

Only 20 per cent of those surveyed agreed with the government's position so far.

The poll also reveals that two-thirds of the Swiss believe that the authorities should have passed on any secret information they had to Marty. Nearly 85 per cent of those surveyed reject as well the use of torture in the fight against terrorism.

swissinfo with agencies