An investigation into alleged CIA secret prisons in Europe reported today that there was evidence that the United States was relying on other countries to torture terror suspects - and it was highly likely that European governments knew of it.

But there was no formal proof so far of the existence of illegal secret detention centres in Romania or Poland, as had been alleged by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Dick Marty, a Swiss senator who led a Council of Europe inquiry into the issue.

"There is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of 'relocation' or 'outsourcing' of torture," Mr Marty said.

"Acts of torture, or severe violation of detainees’ dignity through the administration of inhuman or degrading treatment, are carried on outside national territory, and beyond the authority of national intelligence services."

Mr Marty presented his report today to the Council of Europe, the human rights watchdog on whose behalf he is investigating. He estimated that in recent years more than 100 terror suspects may have been transferred to countries where they faced torture or ill treatment.

"The entire continent is involved," Marty told the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly, a body comprising several hundred national parliamentarians.

"Hundreds of CIA-chartered flights have passed through numerous European countries. It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware."

In the report, Mr Marty analysed several specific cases, including an Egyptian cleric allegedly kidnapped from Milan, Italy, in 2003 by CIA agents, and a German Muslim who was captured on the Macedonian border and taken to Afghanistan in an apparent case of mistaken identity.

Mr Marty also said that he had seen a report of six Bosnians abducted by American agents on Bosnian soil and taken to Guantanamo Bay, despite a Bosnian court judgment ordering their release.

Last week, Italy’s justice minister asked the United States for permission to question 22 purported CIA operatives, whom Italian prosecutors accuse of kidnapping the Egyptian cleric, Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, from a Milan street on February 17, 2003. Mr Nasr is believed to belong to an Islamic terror group.

Prosecutors claim that the cleric, who is also known as Abu Omar, was taken by the CIA to a joint US-Italian air base, flown to Germany and then to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.

Mr Marty said that in the next stage of his investigation he would follow up on evidence gathered in the case of Khaled al-Masri, a German of Lebanese origin who claims he was kidnapped from Germany and taken to Afghanistan.

The Council of Europe inquiry began after allegations surfaced in November that US agents interrogated key al-Qaeda suspects at secret prisons in eastern Europe, and transported some suspects to other countries, passing through Europe. Human Rights Watch identified Romania and Poland as possible sites of secret US-run detention facilities. Both countries have denied involvement.

Secret detention centres would violate European human rights treaties. Mr Marty also told the parliamentary assembly that he had obtained only yesterday flight logs archived by the Brussels-based air safety organization Eurocontrol so he could determine flight patterns of several dozen suspected CIA planes.

He now plans to have flight logs analysed for evidence the CIA secretly transported prisoners to Europe.

Mr Marty also obtained satellite images of air bases in Romania and Poland, requested by the Council of Europe for analysis after the bases were identified by Human Rights Watch as possible locations of secret detention centres.

But his report said that his own research, national investigations and press reports in recent weeks had turned up no "formal, irrefutable evidence" of the existence of secret CIA prisons in Romania, Poland or any other country.

"On the other hand, it has been proved that individuals have been abducted, deprived of their liberty and all rights and transported to different destinations in Europe, to be handed over to countries in which they have suffered degrading treatment and torture," Mr Marty said, adding that if eventually uncovered, the detention centres would probably be very small cells that would be easily hidden.

Mr Marty complained that there was enormous pressure on him to come up with evidence of secret CIA prisons but not much help was coming from the Council of Europe or governments. "Not a single day passes without me being asked, ’Do you have any hard evidence, is there any proof?"’ he said. "I am not a judicial authority, I have no means of investigation, the logistical support available to me is very limited."

The New Statesman last week carried a leaked Foreign Office memo saying that the Government had no idea how many times British airports were used for rendition flights. Both Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Tony Blair have said that they know of only four requests to use UK airports for the flights, all of them before the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, and two of which were turned down.

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