The CIA used a clandestine detention centre in Bucharest to interrogate al Qaeda suspects, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, according to an investigation revealed by German media Thursday. The prison, used between 2003 and 2006, was in the cellar of a government building in a north-western residential neighbourhood of the Romanian capital, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and ARD public television said.
The building housed the Office of the National Register for Secret State Information, or ORNISS, which stored confidential information and ensured only authorised people gained access to it, the reports said. Contacted by AFP on Thursday, ORNISS denied once more having hosted a CIA clandestine detention centre in Bucharest.
"We strongly reject all media speculations alleging this location hosted a CIA prison", it said in a statement. "Starting with the end of 2002, the building situated at 4 Mures street served exclusively as (our) headquarters," it added. According to the investigation, detainees included Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, a top al Qaeda operative and mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged plotter of the USS Cole bombing in Yemen in 2000, was also held at the Romanian centre, ARD said. Journalists from the two media organisations, as well as the Associated Press news agency, said the centre was identified in photos by former CIA operatives active in Bucharest.
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