US News
Secret CIA prisons should not be closed: Rice
By DPA
Sep 10, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Washington - The United States' network of secret overseas CIA prisons, to which US President George W Bush finally admitted earlier this week, should not be closed down, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday.

President Bush and Rice and believed that American citizens would like to keep all means at their disposal to obtain information legally from terrorist suspects, she told America's CBS television.

The information gleaned helped make the US safer, she said.

Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, it had become clear that information was the missing ingredient in preventing terrorist attacks, Rice said.

Finding out who exactly was planning attacks was like looking for a needle in a haystack and was unfeasible, she said. What was needed instead was information.

According to the White House, around 1,000 people had been interrogated in secret CIA prisons abroad. The remaining 14 prisoners had been brought at the beginning of last week to the military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Bush has said they will be tried by military tribunals for war crimes.