Romania to make public any CIA torture site details: Premier

Romania to make public any CIA torture site details: Premier

Prime Minister Victor Ponta said Romania will make public any details it has about the secret CIA detention centres it allegedly hosted, although his government has already said it has "no proof" of such prisons.

"The government will be absolutely open to give all information we might find in the archives to help the prosecutor's office, parliament or the media to know if something happened or not," Ponta told reporters. Bucharest has been accused of hosting a so-called "black site" which the CIA used to torture suspects it believed connected to post-9/11 "terror" activities.

However, the version of the bombshell US Senate report on torture released last week didn't name any of the countries that housed the detention centres. "We have a duty to inform the general public of everything we know from the past," Ponta said. "Since I took office (in 2012) I have never had access to any information to confirm that (the prison sites)."

The premier also called on president-elect Klaus Iohannis - who beat Ponta to become head of state in polls last month - to seek the full version of the US Senate report. While the government has never admitted it knew of CIA prisons on its territory, Romanian prosecutors confirmed to AFP they are investigating claims of a suspect who alleges he was held at one of them.

The probe is focused on a May 2012 complaint from Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is named as a torture victim in the senate report. The alleged mastermind of the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen says he was secretly detained in Romania from 2003 to 2006.

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Romania's foreign ministry reiterated this week it possessed "no proof of the existence of CIA detention centres in Romania or the use of Romanian airports for the transport or detention of prisoners suspected of terrorist acts". But previous news reports identified the countries which had the sites as Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Thailand and Afghanistan.

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