Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16093106 8 December 2011 Last updated at 12:47 ET CIA 'secret prison' found in Romania - media reports Former CIA operatives said the building was used to interrogate terrorism suspects, including Khaled Sheikh Mohammed The CIA operated a secret prison in the Romanian capital Bucharest where terrorism suspects were interrogated, an investigation by the Associated Press and German media has found. Former CIA operatives identified the building where, they said, detainees were held and tortured. The building belongs to a Romanian agency, Orniss, which stores classified information from the EU and Nato. Orniss has denied hosting a CIA prison and the CIA has refused to comment. The investigation, by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and the German TV network ARD, said those held in the secret prison included Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, who has admitted organising the 9/11 attacks. He was seized in Pakistan in March 2003 under the US programme known as "extraordinary rendition" - the extra-judicial detention and transfer of terrorism suspects. He has been in the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay since 2006, where he is awaiting trial. 'Bright Light' The building identified in the German investigation houses the Office of the National Register for Secret State Information, or Orniss. Orniss has denied all claims that its premises were used as a CIA prison. Asked whether the building was ever used to hold Islamist terrorism suspects, Orniss deputy head Adrian Camarasan told the Sueddeutsche: "Here? No!" The building, at 4 Mures Street, was codenamed "Bright Light", the Sueddeutsche reported. One former CIA operative who said he visited the site frequently was quoted as saying: "It was very discreet there. It was not as though Romanian officials came out to greet me." Allegations of a network of CIA "black sites" in countries including Romania first surfaced in 2005 but were denied by Washington. In 2007, an investigation by the Council of Europe accused Romania of operating a secret prison - accusations denied by Bucharest. The CIA called the report "biased and distorted" and said it had operated legally. Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty on Thursday welcomed the new report. "The dynamic of truth has run its course and we are at last beginning to learn what really happened in Bucharest," he said in a statement. However, he criticised the lack of what he called a "serious judicial inquiry" in Romania. In 2006, then-US President George W Bush admitted that terror suspects had been held in CIA-run prisons overseas, but he did not say where the prisons were located. A BBC investigation in 2010 alleged the CIA used a secret Polish prison where Khaled Sheikh Mohammed was subjected to simulated drowning - the practice known as waterboarding. The Associated Press news agency, which worked with the Sueddeutsche and ARD on their investigation, says the alleged prison in Romania opened in 2003 after the CIA decided to empty the black site in Poland. It quoted former US officials speaking on condition of anonymity. The basement consisted of six prefabricated cells, each with a clock and arrow pointing to Mecca, the officials told AP. Waterboarding was not used in Romania, they said. Page 1 of 5 Other detainees of intelligence value to the US held in Romania included Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Faraj al-Libi, AP reported. The Romanian foreign minister told the Council of Europe at the time of its investigation: "No such activities took place on Romanian territory." The ARD programme will be broadcast at 22:00 local time (21:00 GMT) on Thursday. Analysis Gordon Corera Security correspondent, BBC News The controversy over secret prisons is one of the most controversial legacies of the "war on terror." Not just the location but the very existence of the so-called CIA "black sites" was kept secret for many years after 9/11. Top al-Qaeda figures such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah simply disappeared. Intelligence reports began to seep back to some of America's allies from their interrogation but no-one was sure where they were being held - or how they were being treated. Once it became public in 2005/6 that the CIA had operated a secret prison network and that it had engaged in controversial practices like waterboarding, investigators and journalists used flight records to try to work out where the prisons might be located. They used this and other evidence to assert the prisons may have been located in Lithuania, Thailand, Romania and Poland among other countries. The accusations have usually been denied but have still led to awkward questions for the "host" countries in terms of who might have known what. Related Stories CIA jails in Europe 'confirmed' Profile: Al-Qaeda 'kingpin' The Washington Post Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-hidden-history-of-the-cias-prison-in-poland/2014/01/23/b77f6ea2-7c6f- 11e3-95c6-0a7aa80874bc_story.html The hidden history of the CIA’s prison in Poland By Adam Goldman, Published: January 23, 2014 On a cold day in early 2003, two senior CIA officers arrived at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw to pick up a pair of large cardboard boxes. Inside were bundles of cash totaling $15 million that had been flown from Germany via diplomatic pouch. The men put the boxes in a van and weaved through the Polish capital until coming to the headquarters of Polish intelligence. They were met by Col. Andrzej Derlatka, deputy chief of the intelligence service, and two of his associates. The Americans and Poles then sealed an agreement that over the previous weeks had allowed the CIA the use of a secret prison — a remote villa in the Polish lake district — to interrogate al-Qaeda suspects. The Polish intelligence service received the money, and the CIA had a solid location for its newest covert operation, according to former agency officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the interrogation program, including previously unreported details about the creation of the CIA’s “black sites,” or secret prisons. The CIA prison in Poland was arguably the most important of all the black sites created by the agency after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It was the first of a trio in Page 2 of 5 Europe that housed the initial wave of accused Sept. 11 conspirators, and it was where Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-declared mastermind of the attacks, was waterboarded 183 times after his capture. Much about the creation and operation of the CIA’s prison at a base in one of the young democracies of Central Europe remains cloaked in mystery, matters that the U.S. government has classified as state secrets. But what happened in Poland more than a decade ago continues to reverberate, and the bitter debate about the CIA’s interrogation program is about to be revisited. The Senate Intelligence Committee intends to release portions of an exhaustive 6,000-page report on the interrogation program, its value in eliciting critical intelligence and whether Congress was misled about aspects of the program. The treatment of detainees also continues to be a legal issue in the military trials of Mohammed and others at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. And in December, the European Court of Human Rights heard arguments that Poland violated international law and participated in torture by accommodating its American ally; a decision is expected this year. “In the face of Polish and United States efforts to draw a veil over these abuses, the European Court of Human Rights now has an opportunity to break this conspiracy of silence and uphold the rule of law,” said Amrit Singh, a lawyer with the Open Society Justice Initiative, which petitioned the court on behalf of a detainee who was held at the Polish site. Wanted: A better location The story of a Polish villa that became the site of one of the most infamous prisons in U.S. history began in the Pakistani city of Faisalabad with the capture of Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida, in March 2002. The CIA needed a place to stash its first “high-value” detainee, a man who was thought to be closely tied to the al-Qaeda leadership and might know of follow-on plots. Cambodia and Thailand offered to help the CIA. Cambodia turned out to be the less desirable of the two. Agency officers told superiors that a proposed site was infested with snakes. So the agency flew Abu Zubaida to Thailand, housing him at a remote location at least an hour’s drive from Bangkok. The CIA declined to comment, as did Polish authorities through their country’s embassy in Washington. Derlatka, the Polish intelligence officer, did not return messages seeking comment. Several months after the detention of Abu Zubaida, the CIA caught Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, suspected of ties to an al-Qaeda attack on a U.S. warship in Yemen. He, too, was taken to the Thai site. With the prospect of holding more and more captives, the CIA required a better location. “It was just a chicken coop we remodeled,” a former senior agency official said of the facility in Thailand. The CIA reached out to foreign intelligence services. The agency’s station chief in Warsaw reported back with good news. The Polish intelligence service, known as Agencja Wywiadu, had a training base with a villa that the CIA could use in Stare Kiejkuty, a three-hour drive north of Warsaw. Polish officials asked whether the CIA could make some improvements to the facility. The CIA obliged, paying nearly $300,000 to outfit it with security cameras.