BERN, Jan 9: A fax sent by the Egyptian foreign ministry to its embassy in London stated that more than 20 Iraqis and Afghans had been questioned at a US-run base in Romania, a Swiss newspaper reported on Sunday.

SonntagsBlick said the Swiss secret services obtained a copy of the fax which said that the Egyptian embassy in London ‘learned from its own sources that 23 Iraqi and Afghan citizens had been questioned at the Mikhail Kogalniceanu base in the town of Constanza on the Black Sea coast’.

The newspaper quoted a report written by the Swiss defence ministry, which said Egypt believed there were ‘similar centres in Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria’.

The Swiss ministry reacted to the report with a statement saying it would open an investigation into how the information was leaked.

A senior official at the Mikhail Kogalniceanu base he categorically denied the report.

“I have been working at this base since 1995 and I have never been aware of such an operation,” the official said.

He added that the base was open to ‘anyone who wants to carry out an Investigation’.

Amid protests from European governments that their airports are being used by the Central Intelligence Agency to transport suspects, the United States has not denied the existence of alleged prisons in eastern and central Europe.—AFP