Since the end of the ceasefire, ETA prisoners have not been sent back to overseas prisons.

On Thursday, the C.I.A. fired Ms. McCarthy, 61, accusing her of leaking information to reporters about overseas prisons operated by the agency in the years since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Prior to visiting an overseas prison and conducting an interview with a prisoner for broadcast we should normally ask permission from the prison authorities.

This was the genesis of practices later adopted by some within the military, and widely used by the CIA in handling prominent terrorism suspects at a series of secret overseas prisons.

The amendment, which critics said had no power to stop the U.S. military from torturing terrorist suspects, followed years of reports of torture in overseas prisons, such as the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison.

The A.P. reported on Sunday that as many as 14,000 people are being held by the military as "security detainees" in a global network of overseas prisons.

Mr. Negroponte said the plan would impose intolerable limits on any interrogation methods American intelligence officers might use against future terror suspects held by the Central Intelligence Agency in secret overseas prisons.

Parallels were drawn between Maher's escape and the one carried out by Billy Hayes, a previous client of Griffith, who had also made a daring escape while being held in an overseas prison in 1975.

Any proposal to enter an overseas prison without permission must be referred to a senior editorial figure, or for independents to the commissioning editor, who may consult Director Editorial Policy and Standards.

In that meeting, Worricker verbally highlights a note at the foot of page eight alleging that the Prime Minister (Ralph Fiennes) has details about the US government torturing prisoners in secret overseas prisons.