U.S. accused of flouting standards on detainees

PARIS — A European investigator said Tuesday that information he has gathered suggests U.S. intelligence operatives have abducted and transferred terrorism suspects in Europe "without respect for any legal standards" and that he has formally asked Poland and Romania whether the CIA operated secret prisons on their soil.

Dick Marty, a Swiss parliamentarian who is leading a probe into CIA counterterrorism tactics for the Council of Europe, the continent's main human-rights body, also criticized Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as not forthcoming about the CIA's anti-terrorism operations in Europe.

In a brief status report released Tuesday in Paris, Marty said he "deplores the fact that no information or explanations had been provided on this point by Ms. Rice during her visit to Europe" last week.

He said the only formal response he has received from U.S. officials was a copy of a Dec. 5 speech by Rice in which she defended U.S. policy and said Europe had benefited from the aggressive American approach to tracking down terrorist suspects.

Marty offered no details of what he has uncovered during his investigation, which was prompted by a report in The Washington Post last month that the CIA has operated secret prisons for al-Qaida figures in Eastern Europe since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Post has not published the names of the East European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.

The recent rush of revelations about CIA activities in Europe has led to a number of investigations by prosecutors, parliaments and government agencies, including in Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, Austria and Denmark. Opposition lawmakers and human-rights groups in Europe, saying that the alleged activities would violate local and international law on the treatment of prisoners, have questioned whether their own governments were complicit in the operations and have demanded answers.

On Saturday, Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz said his government would open its own investigation into whether Poland allowed the CIA to run a secret prison on its territory. Although numerous Polish officials have denied the existence of any such prisons for weeks, Marcinkiewicz said persistent suggestions to the contrary "could be dangerous for Poland."

Some European reporters and human-rights groups have said they believe prisons were located in Poland and Romania. The government of Romania has also denied the allegations.