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No progress in secret CIA prisons investigation, Russian Foreign Ministry says

The report released in June 2013 by Amnesty International “expressed concern over grave political pressures on the investigation” in Poland

© EPA/NABIL MOUNZER

MOSCOW, January 15. /ITAR-TASS/. No progress has been made in investigating the case of secret CIA prisons in Poland and Lithuania, says the Russian Foreign Ministry's report on 2013 human rights situation in the EU.

Moreover, the ministry says, the report released in June 2013 by Amnesty International “expressed concern over grave political pressures on the investigation” in Poland, a problem also highlighted by the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muinieks. Besides, Poland’s Prosecutor-General refused to provide the European Court of Human Rights with investigation materials, the ministry adds.

Neither was the case completed in Lithuania, where the authorities persist in their unwillingness to resume the probe, explaining their position with “the absence of new circumstances in the case and U.S. refusal to provide necessary information”.

Meanwhile, the Central Criminal Investigation Department in Portugal renewed the case of secret CIA flights transporting terrorism suspects through the country, the ministry notes. The decision followed that month’s release of the international NGO Open Society Foundations called Globalizing Torture. The report listed Portugal among the 54 countries that provided their territories for transportation of suspects to U.S. secret prisons, “where they were held in legal vacuum and tortured”. According to the report, over 2001-2006 planes allegedly linked to the CIA made stopovers in Portugal about 115 times.

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