EU inquiry into CIA prisons to be reopened

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - European Union lawmakers will reopen an inquiry into secret CIA flights and prisons in Europe after lackluster cooperation from EU capitals and new evidence of such activities in Ukraine, deputies said.

EU lawmakers closed a first probe in February by accusing European governments and secret services of accepting and concealing secret U.S. flights carrying terrorism suspects across Europe.

Critics said they had produced no conclusive proof.

European Parliament members Giulietto Chiesa and Claudio Fava said on Wednesday the assembly's civil liberties committee would try to get further answers from EU governments accused of allowing the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to house, interrogate and transport prisoners on European soil.

They cited a documentary by a Russian television journalist, Arkadij Mamontov, as showing new evidence of a secret prison and flights in Ukraine, a neighbor of the 27-nation EU.

Chiesa said he did not have independent evidence to back up the documentary by the pro-Kremlin public broadcasting station RTR, which he said showed footage of a secret prison and interviews with people who helped build it.

"There has been already a decision to have a new continuation," of the investigation, he said. "Ukraine and also many European governments collaborated with (the) CIA in this... and we want to know who is responsible."

A spokeswoman for Ukraine's security service, Marina Ostapenko, said: "There are no foreign prisons on Ukrainian territory, nor have there ever been, nor could there ever be."

Fava was the author of the highly critical European Parliament report on CIA secret prisons earlier this year.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Ron Popeski; Editing by Ingrid Melander)