No one can miss the irony, said the Berlin Tagesspiegel in an editorial. The CIA, the world learned last week, is operating secret prisons for al Qaida suspects around the globe—some in former Soviet bloc nations in Eastern Europe. These KGB-style interrogation centers are an embarrassment to the Bush administration, which set them up as part of its ostensible campaign to make the world freer and more democratic. But the question that Europe is now asking is, 'œWhat could drive young democracies, whose new elites suffered under the communists, to join in such a project?' It's understandable that these East Europeans, recently liberated from decades of Soviet totalitarianism, would idolize America. But the E.U. 'œmust not allow its new members' to participate in American crimes.
Back up a minute, said Bartosz Weglarczyk and Pawel Wronski in Warsaw's Gazeta Wyborcza. These are just allegations. Human Rights Watch named Poland and Romania as the Eastern European countries allegedly cooperating with the CIA, yet the group presented no evidence that such prisons exist here. We have heard many rumors of secret prisons 'œbeing set up in places where journalists don't have access,' such as on board aircraft carriers, or in countries that have no free press, like Thailand. But it 'œwouldn't make sense' to put such a site in Poland, where investigative reporters would sniff it out in no time. It is not fair that Poland is being portrayed as 'œa country that performs illegal and amoral deeds at the bidding of the U.S.'
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