SECRET CIA COMPOUNDS IN EASTERN EUROPE?

According to the informations of Washington Post ’the CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe’. The paper claims the secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eitht countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe. The existence and location of the facilities – referred to as ’black sites’ in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents – are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas. The arrangement has been increasingly debated within the CIA itself. Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA’s approved ’Enhanced Interrogation Techniques’, some of which are prohibited by the U.N. and by U.S. military law – Washington Post claims. The head of the Hungarian law enforcement has denied the existence of such ’black sites’ in Hungary where there are 627 foreigners imprisoned or detained. In Hungary there is a great secrecy about U.S. military stationed here. There is a U.S. military compound in Buda Castle where U.S. marines are stationed protecting the diplomatic missions. The compound in Táncsics street where once Mihály Táncsics, hero of the revolution in 1848 was imprisoned is allegedly used by American soldiers as a fitness centre. Magyar Nemzet has asked the U.S. Embassy in a letter about the compound but no reply has come so far.

Translated by Péter Szentmihályi Szabó