Romanian Guantanamo

There are still five days to go until a commemoration bearing deep meaning for the whole world. On Sunday it will be 10 years since the bloodiest terrorist attack in history. Behind the emotional scenes shown live on every television channel, of planes hitting the Twin Towers or the Pentagon, images of two big cities like New York and Washington covered in smoke and paralyzed with terror and of people desperately throwing themselves out the window, or images of anonymous heroes who gave their lives saving others, Sept. 11, 2001, will forever be remembered as a turning point.

I then understood how fragile civilization becomes in the middle of a direct confrontation with cruelty. We all saw how far fanatics are willing to go with their atrocities, in the name of a twisted religion, perfectly bent to fit political interests. The kings of the world realized how they can make some poor lowlives living in a tent blow up in a second any meaningful building in any country. Also, that technological progress or military force are not enough to keep you safe from attacks which are carried out using your own weapons!

Then, these attacks were the justification for all the so-called “extraordinary” measures used in the global fight against terrorism, which were in fact illegal. Starting with warrantless telephone and email interceptions, these measures escalated to include the humiliating controls we are being subjected to in airports, the refusal of visas for citizens of certain countries which are on the black list and the lock-up of suspects in detention centers outside any official jurisdiction, such as Guantanamo.

At this point, we should stop the traditional praise for our allies across the ocean, avoid making up another “Long live America!” and face the accusations concerning Romania hosting one of America’s ghost prisons. It’s an old story, I know, but this scandal took a different turn after the comments made by the European Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg.

He clearly noted that “A CIA clandestine detention center was opened near Bucharest, on Sept. 23, 2003, immediately after closing the facility in Poland. It is known that at least one important prisoner was transferred at midnight directly to Baneasa Airport. CIA operations then went to Romania for more than two years.” This clear affirmation leaves little room for misinterpretation.

We would have expected that after this statement, the Romanian officials would become worried, but no! Mrs. Norica Nicolai, today a Eurodeputy, who back in the old days coordinated the parliament investigation which concluded that, as the saying goes, we neither had Guantanamo for dinner nor do we smell of it! Calm as an evening spent in a jacuzzi, she assures us that this information is “slightly confusing and totally irrelevant.” In a country where nothing is certain, this couldn’t be more true, not even the weather. But then again, the truth begins with “it seems that”!