Eastern Europe Denies Housing Secret U.S. Prisons

European Union officials said Thursday they would investigate a report that the CIA set up secret jails in Eastern Europe to interrogate top al-Qaida suspects.

The international Red Cross also said it asked the United States to let a representative visit detainees if such a facility exists.

Human Rights Watch in New York said Thursday it has evidence indicating the CIA transported suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania. The conclusion is based on an analysis of flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004 obtained by the group, said Mark Garlasco, a senior military analyst with the organization.

Poland and Romania were among about a dozen nations that denied having CIA facilities in their territory.

In Poland, an aide to President Aleksander Kwasniewski said authorities there had "no information" of such facilities existing there.

"I repeat: We do not have CIA bases in Romania," the country's prime minister, Calin Popescu Tariceanu, said.

Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Georgia and Armenia also issued denials.

Human Rights Watch said it matched the flight patterns of the CIA aircraft with testimony from some of the hundreds of detainees in the war on terrorism who have been released by the United States.

"The indications are that prisoners in Afghanistan are being rendered (taken) to facilities in Europe and other countries in the world," Garlasco told The Associated Press.

"We have been using flight logs of CIA rendition aircraft combined with some witness testimony of people who have been released from Guantanamo and Afghanistan to paint a picture of how the CIA is moving prisoners from Afghanistan to secret detention facilities worldwide," said Garlasco, a former civilian intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Two destinations of the flights in particular stood out as likely sites of any secret CIA detention centers: Szymany Airport in Poland, which is near the headquarters of Poland's intelligence service; and Mihail Kogalniceanu military airfield in Romania, Garlasco said.

Garlasco would not specify where Human Rights Watch obtained the flight logs, saying the group does not want to get those who furnished the information in trouble and that releasing the information might endanger access to such information in the future.