CIA prisons in Europe - new evidence published today

By P Quincy

The Swiss tabloid Sonntags-Blick has published secret documents purportedly proving the existence of CIA prisons in East Europe.

The tabloid Sonntags Blick from Switzerland has published a secretly intercepted fax between Cairo and the Egyptian embassy in London. Swiss intelligence captured the fax, and commented on its (presumably Arabic) contents. The key paragraph in the Blick article, loosely translated, reads as follows:
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( http://www.blick.ch/sonntagsblick/aktuell/artikel30413 )
“Captured in space and secretly sent from a satellite down to earth, the message was sent… on 10 November at 20:24. It is a fax that was exchanged between the Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit (63) in Cairo and his ambassador in London. Swiss intelligence put the following title above the document: “The Egyptians possess sources, that confirm the existence of American secret prisons.” According to the Swiss Secret Intelligence report, the Egyptians reported the following, word-for-word: “The Embassy has learned from its own sources that in fact 23 Iraqi and Afghan citizens were interrogated at the military base Mihail Kogalniceanu, near the city of Constanza on the Black Sea”

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The Swiss government has launched an internal investigation into the leaking of this document, according to the NZZ.( http://www.nzz.ch/2006/01/08/il/newzzEI7B0I1Y-12.html ) The editor of Blick released a statement noting that he had made himself liable to punishment for violation of official secrecy, and perhaps even treason (Landesverrat), but that he had decided to publish the document once convinced of its authenticity.

We’ll see if this news gives any stimulus to the issue of secret prisons, which has pretty much vanished from the US media’s screen, but which clearly still has major resonance in Europe.