[JURIST] A Romanian parliamentary commission announced Wednesday that it had found no evidence that Romania cooperated with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) [official website] in operating illegal secret prisons and extraordinary rendition flights [JURIST news archives] in Europe, or that secret facilities ever existed in Romania. Norica Nicolai [official profile, in Romanian], head of Romania's senate commission, said the conclusion came after a year-long investigation. The commission's report will be debated by the Romanian parliament [official website] next week, before it is sent to European legislators.

The European Parliament (EP) [official website] voted [JURIST report] last week to approve [press release] a report [text] condemning the European countries who allowed the CIA to forcibly remove terror suspects [JURIST report] from within their borders, including the UK, Germany and Italy, and criticized those nations and others for not cooperating with the EP investigation into the CIA's activities in Europe. The existence of secret CIA prisons [JURIST report] in Europe was first reported by the New York Times in November 2005, and in December that year the EP launched an investigation [JURIST report] into the alleged secret prisons. President Bush publicly acknowledged that secret prisons existed [JURIST report] in September 2006, and in January 2007 the UK admitted its prior knowledge of a CIA prison network [JURIST report]. Spain conceded in September 2006 that CIA planes transporting detainees to secret prisons in Europe may have stopped over on its soil [JURIST report] and earlier this month, Portugal opened a probe [JURIST report] into allegations that CIA planes landed in Portugal en route to Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive], among other destinations. Reuters has more.