The case of CIA prisons must also be investigated in Romania
Romania is not supporting the exhaustive disclosure of the alleged illegal detention and torture activities conducted by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on European ground – stated the members of the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) on Tuesday, who conducted field work in the country in September. Csaba Sógor stated: everyone should be equally accountable.
The LIBE Committee organised a public hearing on the 13th of October on the investigation concerning the alleged transportation and imprisonment of CIA detainees to European countries. The investigation on this secret CIA programme has been going on for the past decade as it is believed that the US intelligence agency operated illegal prisons in Poland (2002-2003), Romania (2003-2005) and Lithuania (2005-2006), in buildings provided to them by the states in question. Data, reports, photographs, and hundreds of witnesses support this statement. Recently, the United States also admitted the existence of such activities. The so-called Dianne Feinstein report, published in December 2014, was the first official report on how the CIA, following the terrorist attacks of 2001, tortured detainees in secret European and Asian facilities.
The European Parliament has on several occasions condemned the CIA's extraordinary extradition and secret detention program, as the methods used were in violation of human rights and has requested its Member States to investigate the allegations that secret prisons existed on their territories.
In Romania this matter is not truly investigated - stressed Eva Joly, a member of the LIBE Committee, who was a member of the fieldwork team visiting Romania in late September 2015. According to her, the Romanian authorities were not cooperative enough, denying allegations about illegal prisons being run in the country. MEP Ana Gomes also urged the Romanian MEPs not to deny the existence of this issue.
In a German news outlet, the former leader of the Romanian intelligence service, Ioan Talpeș, has previously admitted that they have given the CIA access to such temporary facilities, but were not aware of exactly what type of activities have been conducted there – said MEP Csaba Sógor. The RMDSZ politician added: the issue of human rights is still not a priority in Romanian politics, a fact that is unfortunately neglected by the international press. According to Csaba Sógor the judiciary system has an important role to play in the investigations and everyone should be equally held accountable.
