EU countries obstructing investigations into CIA renditions, report says

The "most important" of the CIA's secret detention prisons, or 'black sites', in the years immediately following the 11 September attacks was situated in Szymany, some 160km north of Warsaw, according to officers with the US intelligence service.

In a weekend article in the New York Times newspaper, unnamed CIA officers tell of one of the presumed dozens of sites, hitherto vehemently denied by the Polish government as having been located within the country.

One officer quoted in the article says James L. Parvitt, a former director of the agency's clandestine service, as saying: "Poland is the 51st state."

"Poland was picked because there were no local cultural and religious ties to Al Qaeda, making infiltration or attack by sympathisers unlikely," the paper quotes another anonymous agent as saying.

But above all, claims the paper's account of CIA officer recollections, the country was picked because "Polish officials were eager to co-operate."

The article highlights how Al Qaeda operative Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was rendered by a "capture team" from Rawalpindi, Pakistan, to a secret base near Szymany Airport in March, 2003.

The paper describes the site as the location where "the most important of the CIA's black sites had been established," citing interviews from 24 current and former US and foreign intelligence officials.

Poland has consistently denied accusations that its territory was host to such compounds since the first allegations of European participation in abductions and rendition flights first came to light. Full article