Dick Marty has presented his preliminary report on alleged CIA prisons and detainees in Europe, in today’s session of the Parliamentary Assembly in the Council of Europe. High on the list of suspects is Poland and Romania, but also Bulgaria, Ukraine, Macedonia and Kosovo.

What we have found out is actually nothing new. So, there is evidence of 31 flights in and out of Europe conducted by the CIA. Human Rights Watch provided the list to the public and then to the investigation commission some weeks ago, and the Eurocontrol agency documents backed it.

But, there is no hard evidence to support the rumors that Romania, or any other suspected country for that matter, is hosting or had hosted CIA detention centers.

The EU temporary commission is made of 46 members, and it has already announced that it will interview officials of Romania, Poland, Macedonia, and Great Britain. Also, they will have meetings with Gerhard Schroeder (former chancellor of Germany), Javier Solana, and with Gijs de Vries, the EU’s counter-terrorism coordinator.

Claude Moraes (member of the EU Parliament) told Reuters a couple of weeks ago that Romania is not telling the truth in what he called the CIA “scandal”. Apparently he, as other EU MP????????s think, that Romania’s involvement in this issue, together with its well-known problems in terms of human rights, justice and corruption, might delay its accession to the EU (presumable to take place in 2007), by a year or two. The Bucharest officials have to provide the investigation commission with their own report and conclusions about the CIA scandal by February 21.

While there are strong arguments (America will have a few military bases on the Romanian soil, we are part of NATO, mainly because of US support we have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan) for Romania to have such a close partnership with US in the war on terror, it is (almost) impossible for this commission to find any hard evidence in order to prove that Romania has indeed hosted detention centers. They can get it only from CIA, or from the Romanian Secret Service (SIE). I doubt anyone is looking to blow their cover. Also, the Romanian political class (both the government and the opposition) will not dare say anything that might jeopardize the national goal of joining the EU in 2007. In this context, all it’s left to are rumors.