Originally published December 1 2005
ICRC requests access to terrorism suspects detained by U.S.
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
After the Washington Post reported that the CIA has been interrogating suspected foreign terrorists at a secret base in Eastern Europe, the International Committee of the Red Cross has sought access to those prisoners in the interest of administering humanitarian aid.
The detention facility is one of several so-called "black sites" that formed a global network set up after the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
"We are concerned at the fate of an unknown number of people captured as part of the so-called global war on terror and held at undisclosed places of detention," Antonella Notari, chief ICRC spokeswoman, said.
"Access to detainees is an important humanitarian priority for the ICRC and a logical continuation of our current work in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay," she added.
Also in Geneva, the United Nations' Human Rights Committee said it had received two letters and a report from the US which it hoped would address the issue of detainees being held outside the country.
The European Commission said on Thursday it would look into media reports naming two east European countries as allowing the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) to hold al-Qaida suspects outside of any national or international legal jurisdiction.
Friso Roscam Abbing, spokesman for European Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini, said the EU executive would check the reports with Poland, a new member state, and Romania, which is due to join the European Union in 2007.
Romania and Poland denied the allegations on Thursday and Abbing said he had no knowledge of any such prisons at present.
He said the treatment of prisoners was not a matter of EU competence but any secret prisons would not appear compatible with the EU's non-binding Charter of Fundamental Rights or the so-called Copenhagen political criteria for EU membership.
The Washington Post said it had not published the names of the European countries at the request of senior US officials who said disclosure could disrupt counter-terrorism efforts or make the host countries targets for retaliation.
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