SLOVAKIA has still not answered a request from Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly member Dick Marty to provide information on the possible existence of secret CIA prisons on its territory.
Marty asked all EU members to hand over information pertaining to such prisons, members of the Slovak delegation in the council confirmed for the SITA news wire.
"Slovakia has not monitored the situation but we did receive a questionnaire requesting a statement from the Slovak government. We'll deal with this issue in Slovakia because suspicions exist here. Every state should make it clear whether it is able to quash this suspicion or if this issue remains unanswered," stated the head of the Slovak parliamentary delegation and parliamentary deputy, Beata Brestenská.
According to Brestenská, the question of the prisons has not yet been put to the parliamentary Defence and Security Committee. She hopes that Slovak members of the European Parliament investigation committee, Monika Beňová and Miroslav Mikolášik, will cooperate closely with the Slovak authorities.
The European Parliament committee investigating the CIA's activities in European countries will meet for the first time in Brussels on January 26.
The investigation committee, led by Marty, still has no hard evidence of the existence of secret CIA prisons. Neither has it proven that local authorities were aware of them. However, it does have a great deal of reliable data justifying further investigation, stated Marty at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on January 24 at the presentation of his interim investigation report.
- Martina Jurinová
