US: Romania and Bulgaria have dismissed fresh evidence of secret CIA-run prisons in their countries which, if authenticated, could result in sanctions from Brussels ahead of their accession to the EU.
A fax allegedly sent by the Egyptian foreign minister, intercepted by Swiss secret services and printed in a Swiss newspaper, says 23 Iraqi and Afghan prisoners were interrogated by the CIA at the Romanian military base Mihail Kogalniceanu, near Constanta.
The fax to Egypt's London embassy from foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit was sent on November 10th and intercepted by a listening post a few kilometres south of Bern.
The document says Cairo's "own sources" had information on the Romanian facility and further camps in Bulgaria, Ukraine, Macedonia and Kosovo.
The governments in Bucharest and Sofia rejected the allegations yesterday.
"Our position is still the same, Romanian authorities deny the existence of such detention camps," said Doris Mircea, press attaché in Romania's EU permanent representation in Brussels.
"Our president and prime minister invited people to go and see that there are no such camps there."
She declined to say whether camps had ever existed in Mihail Kogalniceanu camp or elsewhere.
Romanian television interviewed Dan Buciuman, the commander of Mihail Kogalniceanu for the last decade, who said he had never seen any prisoner transports.
Bulgarian foreign minister Ivajlo Kalfin said during a visit to Warsaw yesterday that there were no secret prisons in his country.
Franco Frattini, EU Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, has suggested that any EU member state - as well as candidate countries such as Romania and Bulgaria - could face sanctions if allegations of illegal prisons are proven.
His spokesman could not be reached yesterday. However, Mr Frattini said last month that there was no evidence to support allegations of CIA-run secret prisons in Europe.
That contradicted findings of Dick Marty, a Swiss-born investigator for the Council of Europe, the 46-country human rights body. Mr Marty is preparing a report about the prison allegations and said he "couldn't say" whether the Egyptian fax was authentic, but said it appeared to add to the picture of CIA illegal abduction and imprisonments in Europe.
"This is an additional clue, a confirmation of what we already guessed, but many clues come together to form evidence," Mr Marty said. He believes the CIA prisons were moved from Europe in November to northern Africa.
He said that the fax, if authentic, would add to his charges that not all European governments were co-operating with his investigation.
The Sonntagsblick newspaper said it authenticated the fax - what it called the "first proof" of secret CIA prisons - before publishing it, but produced no information about its checks or how it heard about the document.
The Swiss media reported yesterday that a government investigation is under way into how the classified document - apparently meant to be seen by only four people - found its way into the Sunday tabloid. The Swiss government is already considering legal action against the paper.