Rice says CIA thwarted attacks in Europe
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-05 21:22

European governments have expressed outrage over reports of a network of secret Soviet-era prisons in Eastern Europe where detainees may have been harshly treated and that flights carrying al-Qaida prisoners went through European airports.

In Berlin, a government spokesman said Monday that Germany has a list of more than 400 overflights and landings by planes suspected of being used by the CIA that it plans to ask Rice about during her visit to the German capital.

Several countries have denied they provided prison sites. If the United States did operate them, or is still doing so, the information would be classified.

Rice's five-day itinerary includes a stop in Romania, a country identified as a likely site of a secret U.S.-run detention site. Romania denies it.

The general issue of U.S. treatment of detainees in the war on terror has been an irritant in relations with Europe and other parts of the world since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

It gained new immediacy last month with a Washington Post report about a network of CIA prisons overseas, including some in Europe, and claims by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch that it had tracked CIA flights into Eastern Europe.

The European Union's justice commissioner said such prisons and detainee mistreatment would violate European human rights law, and he warned last week than any host countries could lose voting rights in the powerful 25-nation bloc.

Secret prisons and many harsh methods of interrogation would be illegal on U.S. soil. It has been long assumed that the United States holds some of its more valuable and potentially dangerous captives �� such as alleged terror mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed �� outside the country and beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.

Rice's trip to Germany, Romania, Ukraine and Belgium is meant to build on generally improved relations between Europe and the United States after a period of strain over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The war remains widely unpopular in Europe, as does Bush.