Oct 18, 2006 (
Bucharest/Brussels- European lawmakers probing alleged
Euro MPs are currently scrutinizing charges that the CIA ran secret camps on European territory to question terror suspects and whether national governments knew of the practice.
The EU delegation is scheduled to meet with top officials from the Romanian intelligence services, journalists and representatives of non-governmental organizations on October 17-19.
US President George W Bush last month for the first time acknowledged that the CIA was running secret prisons for holding and interrogating high-level al-Qaeda figures that have been captured since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
But he did not give in to European calls to make the location of the camps public. EU lawmakers also pressed national governments to come clean about the extent of their involvement in the issue.
Romanian officials so far denied that the prisons ever existed on the territory of their country - the head of the parliament committee investigating the issue, Norica Nicolai, said that no proof was found yet to back allegations of CIA camps in the country.
The talks with EU officials on Tuesday were focused on the CIA "black flights" carrying suspected terrorists to covert prisons, she said.
While CIA flights did land in
The chairman of the parliamentary committee overseeing national security service, Radu Stroe, said that he directed EU investigators to ask the
"I asked them to again ask Mr. Bush where those prisons are," he said. He added that there was no "concrete elements of evidence" proving the existence of covert prisons.
EU investigators were yet to interview the director of the secret police George Maior, President Traian Basescu's security advisor Sergiu Medar and other officials.
The EU is set to admit
Clandestine detention centres, secret flights via or from
Euro MPs said earlier that they will also go on a fact-finding mission to
Europe's top human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, earlier this year charged that the
The 46-member council which is independent from the EU is conducting a separate inquiry into the CIA charges.
Its final report on a six-months-long inquiry into the CIA charges said that several European states had helped the
President Basescu asks European MPs to support the project for an EU intelligence community
During a meeting, in
“To date, intelligence exchanging process is too difficult,” Basescu said, and added that in case a problem emerges, two countries are exchanging intelligence but, once the problem is solved, the co-operation is concluded, only to be restarted if other security critical issue becomes apparent.
President Basescu pleaded in favour of the advantages that intelligence communities could bring in general, as such structures enable “a continuous lecture of intelligence-related analysis and synthesis” and provide a “higher quality” to gathered intelligence.
“We believe that an intelligence community should be created at the EU level, in order to speed up the transfer and the centralised analysis process of intelligence related to terrorism, drugs smuggling, human trafficking , and illegal weaponry transfer,” Basescu added.
The major asymmetric threats that
When mentioning the military threats—such as the those in the Western Balkans and the frozen conflict in the breakaway Transdniester region of Rep. of Moldova—, President Basescu said they do not represent a direct threat for the Romanian territory but for the stability in the region.
On one hand, the secret services’ legal framework must observe the human rights but, on another hand, it should also provide enough power for the intelligence agencies be able to defend the citizens’ security and combat asymmetric threats, Basescu said. “This is the balance that smart parliamentary commissions (charged with the surveillance of secret services) should look for,” Basescu stated.
As about the role played by the parliamentary commissions that exercise the control over the secret services, President Basescu opined they must “provide the required surveillance in order to prevent any honest citizens’ rights infringement.”
“My belief is that these parliamentary commissions should represent the driving force behind the permanent updating of the homeland security legal framework, this because no asymmetric threat displays a steady behaviour—in terms of intensity, priorities, and required amount of prevention/combating activities, neither in Romania, nor in any other EU member state,” President Basescu declared.
Romanian Govt to postpones decision on national security bills
During today’s session, the Romanian Government postponed dissection and decision regarding the draft laws on national security.
The bills include regulations of intelligence and counterintelligence activities, professional and career statute of intelligence officers, the organization of the secret services and the draft on the national security of
The drafts were discussed by the government before, but were later amended to include certain objections of ministries.
Today, the Govt’s spokesperson Oana Marinescu announced that the decision on the national security bills issue has to be postponed. Yesterday, the Minister of Justice Monica Macovei said in an interview with a local news agency that she is not prepared to give green light to the national security bills as long as the Government persists in ignoring some twenty amendments she put forth.
Macovei pointed out that, in principle, she made observations regarding the agencies entitled to perform phone tapping, regarding the surveillance terms of suspects in terrorist activities cases, as well as regarding a number of vague provisions to be found within the bills text—vague provisions which, on one hand, turned some bills articles in becoming meaningless, and, on another hand, might give place to abuses.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Council for Homeland Security (CSAT) chaired by
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