UN to investigate secret CIA prisons

The UN has launched an investigation into secret detention centres around the world, including those run by America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The investigation, announced on Tuesday, will examine CIA "rendition" flights that secretly transferred suspects to other countries for interrogation, as well as the use of torture in secret prisons around the world. "We call on all governments to cooperate, not just in clarifying the facts, but in ensuring that such secret detention centres will no longer be used," Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said. Under the presidency of George Bush, the US confirmed it had apprehended people it suspected of "terrorism" and taken them to third countries for interrogation. It also acknowledged that the CIA had run secret interrogation centres abroad, but denied employing torture. Barack Obama, the current US president, has vowed to close the detention facilities set up by the CIA, as well as the controversial US prison in Guantanamo Bay. Nowak and his colleague Martin Scheinin, the special rapporteur on human rights while countering terrorism, hailed Obama's changes to US policy, but said that they would "not let the United States off the hook simply because of the change in administration". "It is certainly too early to say that rendition will have stopped," Scheinin said. The investigators said covert prisons were "one of the most horrendous practices" that emerged after the attacks in the US on September 11, 2001. In an annual report to the UN Human Rights Council, Scheinin urged US allies, including Britain and Pakistan, to investigate whether they assisted in secret renditions. Citing "credible" reports, he said the US had sent suspects to covert detention centres in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. The UN investigators said they were "very encouraged" by Poland's move to investigate allegations of a secret CIA jail near Szymany in the country's northeast. In addition to alleged detention centres in Poland and Romania, the two UN experts will look into the role that 10 US military bases around the world may have played in renditions and torture.