BRUSSELS: The legal advisor to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday dismissed as "absurd" allegations that the CIA had illegally transferred thousands of prisoners to third countries, where some of them might risk torture.
"These allegations that there have been thousands of flights with the implication that they all have got detainees on them ... is simply absurd," the legal advisor, John Bellinger, told reporters in Brussels.
"The suggestion that these flights ... are even up to anything that is improper is also, I think, a dangerous suggestion," he said.
Last week, Italian MEP Claudio Fava said that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had carried out more than 1,000 secret flights in Europe since 2001 without any EU governments raising questions.
The United States has come under intense fire over the last year following press reports about numerous CIA flights suspected of carrying undeclared prisoners across European airspace since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The prisoners were reported to have been taken through Europe en route to third countries in a process known as "rendition".
On Wednesday, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that the United States has the right to send prisoners to other countries but also the legal obligation to ensure it is not a place where the captives will be tortured.
"We all know renditions in and of itself is nothing extraordinary," he said. The Council of Europe, a largely human rights watchdog organisation, has been investigating the allegations, as has a European Parliament special committee.
