Swiss Intelligence Confirms CIA Blacksites in Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria

By Scott Horton

A Swiss court has acquitted three Swiss journalists on charges of violating state secrecy requirements for publishing an intelligence intercept of the Swiss intelligence service that confirmed the existence of a CIA “blacksite” detention facility at the Mihail Kogalniceanu Base near the Black Sea city of Constanza in Romania. Swiss intelligence put 23 Iraqi and Afghan citizens at the base and in the custody of the CIA. It states that Romania had made false official statements to European Parliamentary investigators in which the base was denied. It notes the existence of similar “blacksites” at the Szymany Air Base in Poland, in Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria.

The transportation of Iraqi civilians captured in connection with U.S. military operations in Iraq to a location outside of that country would be a criminal act under article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Reports circulated earlier that such a program existed and that it had been approved by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, headed by Jack Goldsmith, now a professor at Harvard University. A copy of a memo purporting to authorize the transportation of Iraqis out of the country by the CIA, dated March 19, 2004, was obtained and published by the Washington Post on October 24, 2004. The memo has been uniformly condemned by legal scholars, some of whom have suggested that the author might be subject to criminal prosecution.