A Swiss senator investigating allegations of CIA secret prisons in Europe has said there was much evidence of "outsourcing of torture" by the United States but that he had not so far uncovered firm evidence the CIA ran secret prisons in Europe.
Swiss senator Dick Marty has already said he was personally convinced of the existence of the detention centres.
Marty said there was much evidence of
Mr Marty said European governments and their spy services probably knew of a secret network of jails in Europe used by the CIA ency.
"It has been proved - and in fact never denied - that individuals have been abducted, deprived of their liberty and transported . . . in Europe, to be handed over to countries in which they have suffered . . . torture," he said in a preliminary report to the Council of Europe.
The United States has been accused of running centres in eastern Europe, where suspects are interrogated, tortured or transported to other countries in a process Washington calls "rendition".
The 46-member council has called on countries to co-operate with the investigation but has not received responses from some countries.
Mr Marty referred to the case of an Egyptian cleric alleged to have been kidnapped by the CIA in Milan in 2003 and transported to Egypt, where the man later said he was tortured.
A Milan court last month issued a European arrest warrant for 22 CIA agents suspected of involvement in the case. Italy's government has strongly denied knowledge of the operation.
The Milan case is one of several investigations into whether US agents used Europe to illegally transfer militant suspects to third countries for interrogation.
For Romania, evidence of a secret prison on its territory would lead to calls for its bid for EU membership to be delayed. For Poland, a suspension of voting rights would undermine its influence within the EU at a delicate stage of its political development.