Frattini said potentially sever legal and political consequences awaited any involved EU member.

WASHINGTON, November 4, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The European Commission has warned that any European country proved to host secret CIA-run jails could face "severe action" by the European Union, Britain's The Daily Telegraph reported Friday, November 4.

Franco Frattini, the justice commissioner, said potentially sever legal and political consequences awaited any EU member, or any country seeking EU membership, if it was confirmed that it had cooperated with the CIA secret prisons program.

Frattini said that all EU member-states are bound by international legal obligations, in particular the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the Convention against Torture.

In theory, nations can be suspended from the 25-state bloc for grave breaches of such fundamental principles.

Calling them the "black sites," The Washington Post revealed on Wednesday, November 2, that the secret prisons were located in at least eight countries, including Thailand and several eastern European democracies.

Citing senior US officials, the daily withheld the names of the eastern European countries at the request of senior US officials who said their disclosure could disrupt counter-terrorist operations in those countries and make them targets of attack.

But the American Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday, November 3, Poland and Romania are among European countries which host the secret prisons.

"Inquiries up until now seem to indicate that Poland and Romania are the countries that received prisoners held by the CIA," Jean-Paul Marthoz, a spokesman for HRW's Belgian branch, said in statements carried by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of the rights group, said top Al-Qaeda suspects, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, were moved out from Afghanistan in September 2003.

The same month, a Boeing 737, leased by the CIA to transport prisoners, departed from Kabul and made stops at remote airfields in Poland and Romania before continuing on to Morocco and then to the Cuba-based Guantanamo Bay, he said.

"It's a large aircraft so one could imagine a large group of detainees flying on this plane, as against some other smaller executive jets that they used," Malinowski told AFP.

"The fact that it stops in eastern Europe, then Morocco and then Guantanamo suggests different classes of prisoners being deposited in different places," he said.

The Post further revealed that that prisoners considered of less value were turned over to the intelligence services of Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and other countries, where they were held in jails operated by the host country with CIA assistance and sometimes direction.