EU countries warned over alleged secret CIA jails

A European Union official has warned that any member country found to have hosted a secret CIA prison could have its voting rights suspended.

Franco Frattini, the EU justice and security commissioner, said the countries would face "serious consequences" if reports prove true that the U.S. intelligence agency has been running clandestine detention centres in Europe to interrogate suspects in Washington's war on terror.

Frattini told a news conference in Berlin on Monday that he would be forced to recommend that the suspension of the EU countries' voting rights.

The move, which would have to be approved by the EU Council, would be an unprecedented sanction for the 25-member trading bloc.

Frattini said secret jails would violate the European Convention on Human Rights and various EU treaties.

Allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency was running a secret prison system in eastern Europe to interrogate key al-Qaeda captives were first reported in the Washington Post on Nov. 2.

• FROM NOV. 2, 2005: CIA running secret prison system: report

The advocacy group Human Rights Watch then said it had evidence the CIA had flown suspects from Afghanistan to Poland, which is already in the EU, and Romania, which hopes to join it in 2007.

Both countries have denied the reports.

U.S. asked for more time to respond

The Washington Post said the CIA had been operating the sites in at least eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in eastern Europe.

The secret detention system was conceived in the first months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the newspaper said.

Frattini said justice officials from the EU had raised the report with White House and State Department officials during a visit to Washington a week earlier.

Washington requested more time in order to respond to the allegations, Frattini said Monday.

A number of countries, as well as rights organizations, began investigations after the reports surfaced.