MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIR BASE, Romania (AP) – In a weedy field on this wind-swept military base, Romanians in greasy combat fatigues tinker with unmanned drone aircraft near a ragged lineup of rusting MiG-29 fighter jets.

There’s not an American in sight, but the sprawling Soviet-era facility has become a key focus of a European investigation into allegations the CIA operated secret prisons where suspected terrorists were interrogated.

Top Romanian leaders and the Pentagon vehemently deny that the Mihail Kogalniceanu base in the country’s southeast ever hosted a covert detention center, and the Romanians insist the United States never used it as a transit point for al-Qaida captives.

“It’s impossible for something like that to have happened on this base,” Lt. Cmdr. Florin Putanu, the base’s No. 2 officer, angrily told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

But the compound, heavily used by American forces in 2001-2003 to transport troops and equipment to Afghanistan and Iraq, and scheduled to be handed over to the U.S. military early next year, is under increasing scrutiny.

Ioan Mircea Pascu, Romania’s defense minister in 2001-2004, told the AP that parts of Mihail Kogalniceanu were off-limits to Romanian authorities, and the country’s main intelligence agency said it has no jurisdiction there.

Pascu said he could not determine whether prisoners were ever held at the installation, but he conceded that planes flying captives to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may have made stopovers in Romania.

On Tuesday, Swiss lawmaker Dick Marty – heading the probe by the Council of Europe, the continent’s top human rights watchdog – said he was trying to acquire satellite images of the base and Poland’s Szczytno-Szymany airport. Both, Human Rights Watch alleges, were likely sites for secret CIA prisons.

Marty has asked the Brussels, Belgium-based Eurocontrol air safety organization to provide details of 31 suspected aircraft that landed in Europe and, according to Human Rights Watch, had direct or indirect links to the CIA.

Several of the flights stopped at the Romanian and Polish sites, the group said, basing its information on flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004. It said one of the alleged CIA flights that transited Mihail Kogalniceanu on Sept. 22, 2003, originated in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Other airports that might have been used by CIA aircraft in some capacity include Palma de Mallorca in Spain, Larnaca in Cyprus and Shannon in Ireland, as well as the U.S. air base at Ramstein, Germany, Marty said. Investigations into alleged CIA landings or flyovers are under way in Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and there have been unconfirmed reports in Macedonia and Malta.

Officials in ex-communist Romania – like Poland, a key U.S. ally in the global war on terrorism – have reacted with outrage to the suggestion that Mihail Kogalniceanu may have been used to transport, hide or interrogate suspected terrorists.

Secret detention centers, the alleged existence of which was first reported by The Washington Post, would be illegal in both nations and could deal a huge setback to Romania’s drive to join the European Union in 2007.

The CIA has refused to comment on the European investigation.

The U.S. Department of Defense “did not and does not detain enemy combatants in Romania,” a spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, told AP. He said the Pentagon would not disclose what countries the U.S. military might fly over “or make brief refueling stops in during detainee movements. Doing so would constitute a safety risk to both the detainees and our troops.”

Romanian President Traian Basescu said U.S. officials never asked the country to host a so-called “black site” prison. The Defense Ministry said it was unaware of any such site, and Foreign Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu said there was “nothing in our dossier” or in documents from the previous government ousted last year.

“In good faith, I have no idea of such a thing,” Ungureanu told AP.

AP reporters and a photographer allowed to roam the 790-acre military base found it virtually deserted, with no Americans on the installation and no obvious sign of a detention center among its 104 buildings. They include a U.S.-built gymnasium erected in 2003 and new, wood-paneled and carpeted briefing rooms tucked amid groves of scraggly trees.

Only two Romanian soldiers guarded the front gate of the base, which is surrounded by a fence topped with concertina wire and signs warning passers-by not to take photographs.

Lt. Cmdr. Adrian Vasile, who oversees the base, said U.S. forces – who at one point numbered 3,500 – pulled out in June 2003. About 1,600 American troops returned in July and August for joint training exercises.

In October 2004, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited the installation just inland from the Black Sea port city of Constanta. The Pentagon intends to take it over as part of a strategic shift aimed at placing American forces on “lily pads” closer to potential targets in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Asked whether U.S. officials could have carried out covert activities on the base without his knowledge, Vasile said flatly: “No.”

Putanu, his deputy, said he had no knowledge of any American intelligence officers or Muslim prisoners setting foot on the installation.

Romania, which shook off communism in 1989 after decades of repression under the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, developed close ties with the United States in its quest for membership in NATO, which it joined in 2003.

At Washington’s request, the country was among the first to sign a treaty exempting U.S. citizens from prosecution by the newly established International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. It has deployed non-combat troops to help U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and has allowed the United States to use its airspace.

Underscoring the friendship between the two countries, the main road leading to the base airstrip has been named George Washington Boulevard.

“Here at Kogalniceanu, we are human,” Putanu said. “Really good things are happening here. It’s a shame that someone who may not even know where Romania is would throw dirt on what we are trying to do.”

—

Associated Press reporters Alison Mutler in Romania and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.