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Russian state-controlled TV revives allegation of secret CIA prison
in Ukraine
By Associated Press
03/13/06 "AP" -- -- MOSCOW - Russian state television revived an
allegation that Ukraine hosted a secret CIA prison for terrorist
suspects, a move Kiev allegedly made to prove its loyalty to the
United States.
The alleged prison was located in a former nuclear weapons storage
base in a military garrison in the Kiev region, an investigative
reporter for Rossiya television said in a broadcast late Sunday. He
said the prisoners were probably transferred to Ukraine from Poland
and Romania.
“In the opinion of many foreign experts, Ukraine served as a
buffer,” the reporter, Arkady Mamontov, said. “When information
about the location of secret prisons on the territory of East
European states, first of all Poland, came out and the scandal
started, they remembered the Ukrainian variant.”
The Russian state television allegations come just two weeks before
Ukraine’s parliamentary elections, in which one of the top issues
will be whether Kiev’s top foreign policy priority should be Russia
or the West. President Viktor Yushchenko aspires for Ukraine to join
NATO. The party that is currently ahead in the polls, led by former
Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, favors closer ties with Moscow.
Ukrainian officials vehemently denied allegations of a secret prison
when they were first printed in a Swiss newspaper in January.
“There are no secret detention facilities or secret bases run by
foreign governments on Ukrainian soil,” Ukrainian State Security
agency spokeswoman Maryna Ostapenko said at the time.
Mamontov last made a splash in Russia with his report on British
spies allegedly sending and receiving intelligence through
transmitters hidden in a rock in a Moscow park and funding
non-governmental organizations. The footage for that broadcast came
from Russia’s intelligence service.
Mamontov did not divulge his sources for the Ukraine prison report,
saying only that he got most of his information “practically from a
firsthand source.” He also spoke with an employee of a company that
performed a renovation at the base and with soldiers who described
underground storehouses.
The allegations of secret CIA prisons in Europe were first reported
by The Washington Post in November. The New York-based Human Rights
Watch group identified Romania and Poland as possible hosts of
secret U.S.-run detention facilities; both denied involvement.
Clandestine detention centers and secret flights to countries where
suspects could face torture would violate European human rights
treaties.
© 2006 Khaleej Times All Rights Reserved.
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