The CIA Presence in Romania

A recurrent theme in political and media disputes around the globe, the so-called secret CIA jails in Europe have again grabbed headlines recently.

Bogdan Matei, 23.04.2015, 13:49

Romania’s president in the early 2000s, the leftist Ion Iliescu, has confessed, for the first time, that he allowed U.S. intelligence to operate a facility in Romania. He made the statement in an interview with the German weekly “Der Spiegel” and explained this was a gesture of goodwill towards the US ahead of Romania’s joining NATO in 2004. Nevertheless, Romanian officials were unaware people were detained there, says Iliescu. According to German journalists, Ion Iliescu is the second head of state, after the Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, to admit to the existence of CIA secret detention facilities in Europe.

Romanian Liberal MP, Norica Nicolai, says Iliescu’s statements don’t bring anything new, and they don’t contradict the conclusions of the parliamentary inquiry commission, which she headed in 2001 while a senator. There were no clues, at the time, that Romania had been the site of secret CIA jails or that prisoners had been transferred here, the commission report concluded. Ioan Talpes, who was a national security adviser to Romanias president from 2000 to 2004, had already admitted that Romania had allowed U.S. intelligence to operate a facility on its territory but that he had told the Americans the Romanian side did not want to know what was happening inside the building in Bucharest.

These statements by Ion Iliescu and Ioan Talpes come to contradict Romania’s official stand on the matter, namely, that Romania had never hosted CIA detention facilities. The European Convention on Human Rights, to which Romania is a party, says states have an obligation to ensure that those under their jurisdiction are protected from torture or extra-judicial detention. Horrified by the thousands of deaths caused by Al-Qaida, the international public opinion in the early 2000s was not that strict with the methods used by American intelligence services and their allies. The main goal at the time was to prevent carnage, especially after the attacks in Madrid and London, which followed the 9/11 ones.

The stories about prisoners tortured in CIA secret jails emerged afterwards. “Had we known what was going to happen there, the answer would have surely been negative,” Iliescu has said.