Military prosecutors in Switzerland have opened an investigation into a newspaper editor and two journalists for having published news of a secret fax which appears to confirm allegations of CIA secret prisons in Europe, Italian news agency Adnkronos International (AKI) has reported.
On Sunday, Zurich-based weekly SonntagsBlick published the contents of a fax from Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit to the Egyptian Embassy in London regarding a purported CIA prison in Romania and suggesting there were other such prisons in Bulgaria, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Ukraine. The fax stated that 23 Iraqis and Afghans had been interrogated at a Romanian military base. Romanian Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu has denied the allegations, AKI said.
Swiss Defence Minister Samuel Schmid has instructed military officials to investigate SonntagsBlick editor Christoph Grenacher and thw reporters who wrote the story – Sandro Brotz and Beat Jost – for having disclosed classified military secrets. SonntagsBlick reported that the fax was sent by satellite from Cairo to London on November 15 and intercepted by the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service (SRS).
The news report said the Egyptian foreign minister's fax was picked up by the Swiss secret service Onyx's satellite listening system in Zimmerwald on November 10. This was just three days after European human rights watchdog, Council of Europe, launched an investigation into a report by Washington Post that secret US detention facilities existed in eight countries worldwide, including several former Soviet bloc nations.
In the fax, Aboul Gheit discusses the fate of 23 detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan whom the US held at the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base in Romania on the Black Sea coast. Gheit concluded: "Romanian authorities continue to deny the presence of secret prisons used by US intelligence to interrogate members of Al Qaeda."
Swiss defence ministry spokesman Jean-Blaise Defago said on Monday that Samuel Schmid had "ordered an investigation into how this secret document became public" and may take legal action against SonntagsBlick for publishing the document in violation of Swiss law, the Associated Press reported. Defago declined to comment on the contents of the document. The journalists face up to five years in prison if convicted under the Swiss military penal code, according to Alex Biscaro, a spokesman at the Swiss Embassy in Washington, DC.
A Guardian report said that Grenacher admitted to knowing that publication could result in punishment. However, he said: "As soon as we made sure the document was authentic, I made a final decision to go public, without ifs and buts. We are not only servants of the state. As journalists with SonntagsBlick, we see ourselves also as keepers of the state. As maintainers of and fighters for the constitutional state. We dislike being muzzled as much as we dislike secret prisons."
The Bucharest Daily News quoted Romanian defence ministry spokesman Cristinel Ghica, as denying the existence of CIA prisons in an interview with Realitatea TV. "So far no one has found any kind of evidence proving the existence of such prisons in Kogalniceanu or in any other military base. There is no such thing," Ghica said.
Leading rights group, Human Rights Watch, subsequently identified Romania and Poland as possible hosts for the alleged secret CIA jails. EU justice commissioner, Franco Frattini in December warned EU member states and candidate countries such as Romania and Bulgaria they could face sanctions if the allegations prove to be true.
