Washington Post Reveals CIA's Secret Prison Network in Eastern Europe

Washington Post journalist Dana Priest publishes a groundbreaking investigation revealing the CIA operates a “hidden global internment network” of secret prisons, including facilities in “several democracies in Eastern Europe.” The article exposes the existence of CIA black sites where terrorism suspects are held indefinitely without legal process and subjected to interrogation techniques that amount to torture. The revelation triggers international controversy and forces unprecedented public scrutiny of America’s post-9/11 detention practices.

The investigation reveals that the CIA has been holding and interrogating high-value al-Qaeda suspects at secret facilities on foreign soil since 2002, operating outside U.S. legal jurisdiction and international oversight. While the Post withholds specific country names at the CIA’s request, citing national security concerns, the article confirms the existence of facilities in Eastern European democracies that recently joined NATO and the European Union. The black sites operate under complete secrecy with no access by the International Committee of the Red Cross, legal counsel, or independent monitors.

The European facilities are later confirmed through court rulings to be located in Poland (operational December 2002 to September 2003), Romania (September 2003 to November 2005), and Lithuania (February 2005 to March 2006). These countries receive millions of dollars in payments from the CIA for hosting the secret prisons, despite the operations violating European human rights law and their own constitutional protections.

The exposé prompts urgent questions in European parliaments and international human rights organizations. The Council of Europe launches investigations into CIA rendition flights and secret detention facilities. In 2014 and 2018, the European Court of Human Rights rules that Poland, Romania, and Lithuania violated the European Convention on Human Rights by allowing the CIA to torture detainees on their territory, ordering the countries to pay damages to torture victims Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

The revelation of the black sites represents a pivotal moment in exposing the CIA’s torture program. It demonstrates how the U.S. deliberately established detention facilities in countries with weaker legal protections to circumvent American law and international treaties. Former Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski later admits he authorized the secret facility, while Romanian officials continue denying involvement despite court findings. The black sites scandal illustrates the systematic nature of the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program and the complicity of allied governments in facilitating war crimes.