Swiss "Onyx" intercepts evidence of U.S. "black sites".(INSIDER REPORT)(electronic surveillance network detects interrogation centers)(Brief Article)

Like most contemporary Western governments, Switzerland has at its disposal a sophisticated electronic surveillance network akin to the National Security Agency's "Echelon" program. Late last year, the Swiss system, known as "Onyx," intercepted an official fax sent by Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit to the country's London embassy discussing "the fate of 23 detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan who were apparently interrogated at the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base in Romania on the Black Sea coast," reported the January 10 London Telegraph. The Egyptian fax, as summarized in the Swiss newspaper Sonntagsblick, observed: "There are similar interrogation centers in Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia, and in Bulgaria."

The intercepted fax constitutes the first "real evidence" that "the US interrogated suspected terrorists at secret prisons in Eastern Europe," observed the Telegraph. Significantly, Egypt is a partner in the Bush administration's practice of "rendition," through which terrorist suspects are delivered by the CIA into the ...