LISBON, Portugal (IPS/GIN) - A British lawyer has warned that the Portuguese government may face a lawsuit if Portuguese Prime Minister José Súcrates and his predecessor José Manuel Barroso fail to “clearly and transparently” answer questions about secret CIA flights that transported prisoners to U.S. Occupied Guantnamo, Cuba.

Speaking to the press in Lisbon April 3, Clive Stafford Smith, the head of the British human rights group Reprieve, warned the Portuguese government to cooperate voluntarily in the search for the truth.

Reprieve says it has documentary evidence that Portugal was involved in the illegal transfer of Central Intelligence Agency prisoners, in CIA or chartered planes, to the U.S. base at Occupied Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The case of the CIA “extraordinary renditions” flights goes back to November 2005, when the Washington Post revealed the existence of secret CIA prisons in several countries and documented the illegal transport of prisoners, particularly to Occupied Guantanamo.

The CIA extraordinary rendition program involves flying or otherwise transferring terrorism suspects from their place of detention to countries where they are not nationals, and where the security services are known to practice torture.

Stafford Smith, who is also the defense lawyer for three detainees in Occupied Guantanamo, added that many prisoners were transported aboard ships that made port calls in Portugal, when conservative Social Democratic Party leader Barroso was prime minister, from 2002 to 2004.

Mr. Barroso is now the president of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union.

“There is zero doubt that the Portuguese government was complicit with the rendering of prisoners,” Atty. Stafford Smith said.

Reprieve, which defends prisoners facing the death penalty, said the intention of its questions to the Portuguese government was to provide evidence urgently needed to prove its clients’ innocence and save their lives.

In January, the group released a report stating that 728 prisoners at the notorious U.S. detention camp in Occupied Cuba had been transported through Portuguese jurisdiction, and that at least 94 rendition flights used Portuguese airspace or facilities between 2002 and 2006.

Atty. Stafford Smith said he was not in Lisbon to make accusations against anyone in the socialist Súcrates administration, but emphasized that everyone has an obligation to cooperate when a person is facing the death penalty, especially in a place such as Guantanamo.

According to the lawyer and activist, the fight against terrorism cannot be undertaken at any price but must be based on the values accepted by civilized society that are the foundation of the United States and every democracy.

As a student, he said, he never dreamed that when he became a lawyer he would be asking why the U.S. government allowed torture involving the cutting of prisoners’ genitals with razor blades.

He added that although the Guantanamo prison camp is the most notorious and has received the heaviest media coverage, it is far from being the only detention center where torture is practiced.

He said his group estimates that there are presently about 27,000 illegal prisoners, which means that more than 95 percent of them are not at Guantanamo, but at different secret prisons.

“There are two ways of making the Portuguese government cooperate: the nice way, by voluntary cooperation with our investigation, and the not-so-nice way. The not-so-nice way is to sue them and make them do it,” the attorney said.

What is known to date about the CIA flights “is only the tip of the iceberg,” said Portuguese socialist Ana Gomes, a member of the European Parliament after Atty. Stafford Smith’s press conference.

After persistent allegations by Reprieve, the British government finally admitted in March that several CIA planes had in fact passed through its territory, contradicting a series of denials by London since the scandal erupted in late 2005, “which shows that an inquiry is necessary, to investigate the evidence in the report that has now been published about Portugal,” she said.