CIA prisons in Europe closed in November - ABC News
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-06 15:14

The United States held captured al Qaeda suspects at two secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe until last month when the facilities were shut down after media reports of their existence, ABC News reported on Monday, citing current and former CIA agents.

Eleven al Qaeda prisoners who were held in Eastern Europe were relocated "to a CIA site somewhere in north Africa," ABC reported, citing CIA sources.

The United States scrambled to get all of the suspects off European soil before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Europe on Monday, ABC said, citing the sources.

ABC said the CIA declined comment and an agency spokesman was not available when Reuters tried to contact him.

According to ABC News, eight top al Qaeda figures and three others were held at one time at a former Soviet air base in Eastern Europe and some were later moved to a second country. ABC said Polish sources had identified a base as the site of one of the secret prisons.

U.S-based Human Rights Watch has said Poland and Romania were the most likely locations for the detention centers, but both countries have denied it.

The United States has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the secret prisons, which the Washington Post first reported on last month.

In an expanded report on its Web site, ABC News cited sources directly involved in setting up the CIA secret prison system as saying that it began with the capture of Osama bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zabaydah in Pakistan.

ABC said Zabaydah was first held in Thailand in an unused warehouse on an active air base. The report said after Zabaydah recovered from life-threatening wounds, he was made to stand long hours in a cold cell and strapped feet up to a "water board" until he begged for mercy and began to cooperate.

In "waterboarding," a detainee is strapped down, dunked under water and made to believe that he might be drowned.

Before leaving Washington for Europe on Monday, Rice defended U.S. treatment of terrorism suspects. She did not directly address the allegation that the CIA has run secret prisons in Eastern Europe, however, she reaffirmed the United States does not use torture.

ABC News cited intelligence officers as saying that Rice could say that because of a presidential finding that approved "enhanced interrogation techniques," which the United States has said are not torture. These include sleep deprivation and waterboarding.

ABC cited its sources as saying that the al Qaeda suspects being held are regularly subjected to these interrogation techniques.

In the report on the Web site, ABC cited sources as saying that of the suspects held by the CIA, only one, Ramzi bin al-Shaibah, a suspected coordinator of the September 11, 2001 attacks, did not require water boarding before he talked.

The report said al-Shaibah broke down in tears after he was walked past the cell of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the attacks on the United States. The sources were cited as saying a visibly shaken al-Shaibah started to cry and became cooperative.