Poland orders probe into alleged CIA jails
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-11 10:55

Quoting unidentified former airport employees, the paper said Saturday the planes remained on the runway and did not refuel. Only border control officials and mini vans approached the aircraft. One former employee said the vans were from nearby Kiejkuty, the site of a training school for Poland's intelligence services.

A former chief of Poland's intelligence agency, Zbibniew Siemietkowski, told the newspaper that Poland and American spies had cooperated "intensively" since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"It would be entirely normal if Americans landed in Mazury," Siemietkowski said, referring to the region where both the airport and intelligence school are located.

Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said in remarks published Friday in Gazeta Wyborcza that Poland was the chief CIA detention site in Europe, part of a system of clandestine prisons for interrogating al-Qaida suspects.

The Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights watchdog, has also launched an investigation into the secret CIA prisons. EU leaders say any member states found to have been involved in such prisons could have their voting rights suspended.

Secret facilities and harsh interrogation methods would violate European human rights conventions.