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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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December 28th,
2006 - Hunt for CIA ‘Black Site’ in Poland |
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Hunt for CIA ‘Black Site’ in
Poland By Nick Hawton BBC News December 28, 2006 I stood at the end of the
frozen runway, peering through the mist, trying to make out the terminal
building in the distance. It was exactly at this spot,
and under the cover of darkness, that the CIA planes did their business. "They always followed
the same procedure," says Mariola Przewlocka, the manager at the remote
Szymany airport in north-east Poland when the strange flights arrived during
2003. "We were always told to
keep away. The planes would stay at the end of the runway, often with their
engines running. A couple of military vans from the nearby intelligence base
would go up to them, stay a while and then drive off, out of the airport. ‘Cash payments’ "I saw several of these
flights but never saw inside the vans because they had tinted windows and
they never stopped at the terminal building. "Payment was always
made in cash. The invoices were made out to American companies but they were
probably fake," says Mrs Przewlocka. In September 2006, President
Bush admitted what had been suspected for a long time - that the CIA had been
running a special programme to transport and interrogate leading members of
al-Qaeda, away from the public spotlight. Human rights groups have
expressed concerns that the prisoners may have been tortured. The hunt has been on ever
since to locate the secret prisons, or "black sites" as they are
known. Poland and Romania have been
named by investigators as hosting such sites. The claims are denied by
both governments. CIA landings After a week of meetings in
smoky Warsaw restaurants and coffee bars with Polish intelligence sources,
airport workers and journalists, I obtained what I had been looking for, and
something that nobody in authority wanted to reveal, the flight log of planes
landing at Szymany airport. They confirmed my
eyewitness's account - that a well-known CIA Gulfstream plane, the N379P, had
made several landings at the airport in 2003. The plane has been strongly
linked to the transportation of al-Qaeda terrorists. Another plane, a Boeing 737,
had flown direct from Kabul to this remote Polish airport. "There is no particular
reason for a Gulfstream to stop there. So there has to be a reason why the
plane is stopping there and the fact that everyone is trying to conceal this
reason makes it all the more interesting to try to find out what it is,"
says Anne Fitzgerald from Amnesty International. I followed the route of the
military vans from the airport to the nearby secret Polish intelligence base
at the village of Stare Kiejkuty. Surrounded by double-lined
fences, security cameras and thick pine forest, visitors are not welcome. ‘Secret prison’ Within five minutes of
stopping the car I was approached by a man in a military uniform who made it
clear he wanted me to leave. Was this where a CIA secret
prison had been located? A committee of European parliamentarians
who investigated the CIA secret prison programme subsequently concluded in a
report: "In the light of...
serious circumstantial evidence, a temporary secret detention facility may
have been located at the intelligence training centre at Stare
Kiejkuty." Others go further. Marc
Garlasco is a senior military analyst with Human Rights Watch. He says: "It's almost a
foregone conclusion that Poland hosted a CIA Black Site." But the authorities in
Poland do not want to talk about it. All requests for interviews
with government ministers were rejected. The European parliamentarians met a
similar wall of silence. One civil servant from the
prime minister's office claimed a secret, internal inquiry had concluded
there had been no "black site" in Poland. Others disagree. "I think it's quite
probable there was a kind of transfer site, a black site, in Poland. There is
a Kafka-like mood in Warsaw. No one from the government has the will to
answer our questions," says Jozef Pinior, a senior Polish politician,
who has called for a commission to investigate the claims. With Polish troops serving
in Afghanistan and Iraq, and with the United States as the country's key
ally, there is no desire to delve into the secret deals made in the secret
war against international terrorism. The US state department has
said it always complies with its laws and treaty obligations and respects the
sovereignty of other countries. But the truth of Poland's
role may soon emerge. The new
Democratic-controlled US Congress may begin its own investigation into the
CIA secret prisons programme in the next few months. External link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6212843.stm |