EU lawmakers urge probe, sanctions over CIA jails

BRUSSELS, Jan 23 (Reuters) European Union governments should investigate allegations that one or more of them may have hosted secret CIA prisons, and punish any that violated human rights, European Parliament members said today.

A draft, which will go before a full EU assembly vote next month, upheld the original allegation that many EU countries - notably Britain, Germany and Ireland - ''knew of secret CIA flights'' over the 27-member bloc.

But in a revised report on their own probe into alleged Central Intelligence Agency jails in Europe, they softened earlier accusations that Poland may have hosted one.

A parliamentary committee began investigating the affair after allegations surfaced in late 2005 that the CIA had secretly held al Qaeda prisoners in Europe and transferred some to countries that practise torture.

But committee members voted today to revise their final report, saying the 27 EU governments, should ''start hearings and commission an independent investigation without delay, and where necessary impose sanctions on member states in case of a serious and persistent breach of Article 6''.

European laws guarantee the right of suspects to a fair trial before an independent tribunal and says they are innocent until proved guilty.

As the guardian of EU law, the EU's executive Commission could launch legal proceedings, as could private citizens.

The probe has provoked anxiety in some EU capitals.

In a rare display of solidarity, British Labour MEPs and their rival Conservative colleagues came together in a failed attempt to try to get references to British ministers scrapped and some findings deleted.

STEINMEIER DENIES OFFICIAL US OFFER A German amendment, accusing Berlin of not accepting an offer from the United States in 2002, to release German-born Turk Murat Kurnaz from Guantanamo Bay was upheld in an affair now implicating Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

He was Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's chief of staff at the time that Kurnaz was detained in Pakistan in 2001 on terror charges. He denied there had been any official approach to him.

''I don't know of any such official offer,'' Steinmeier told reporters in Brussels, his first public comments on the issue since the new allegations were made.

The committee said a member state should also face sanctions ''where a violation of human rights has been stated by an international body but no measure has been taken''.

The possible sanctions were not spelt out, but EU security commissioner Franco Frattini said in November 2005 that if reports of secret CIA jails were true, states would face serious consequences including suspension of their EU voting rights.

Investigators and human rights groups have focused mainly on Poland and Romania as possible locations for U.S. secret prisons in the EU. Both countries strongly deny the charge.

In an earlier draft of its report last November, the European Parliament committee said there was ''serious circumstantial evidence'' of the existence of such a detention centre at Stare Kiejkuty in northern Poland.

But Tuesday's revised version said: ''It is not possible to acknowledge that secret detention centres were based in Poland.'' U.S. President George W. Bush confirmed last September that the CIA had held high-level terrorism suspects at secret overseas locations, but Washington had declined to say where these were. It denies using torture or handing over prisoners to countries that practise it.

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