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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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April 29th,
2009 - Uncovering the Veil Over ‘CIA Prison’ |
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Uncovering the Veil Over ‘CIA
Prison’ By Zoltán Dujisin Inter Press Service April 29, 2009 Budapest - An official
investigation shows that it is more and more likely that a CIA prison existed
in Poland at the height of the "war on terror". The Council of Europe, the
European Parliament and the European Commission all produced reports between
2006 and 2007 in which the existence of CIA (the U.S.'s Central Intelligence
Agency) prisons in Poland and Romania is mentioned as highly probable. The prison in Poland
allegedly existed between 2002 and 2005 and was located there partly due to
Polish eagerness to cooperate with the U.S. following the Sep. 11 terrorist
attacks. The reported evidence so far
comes from leaked documents and anonymous testimonies given to the Council of
Europe and U.S. and Polish media. Among the high-profile
suspects to have spent time in Poland is believed to be Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed, pointed to as the main organiser of attacks on U.S. soil. CIA prisons, whose existence
abroad was admitted by former U.S. president George W. Bush, without naming
countries, are also believed to have been set up in Africa and the Middle
East, but the Polish base could have been the most important one, said a June
2008 report in the New York Times. According to human rights
organisations, prisoners in CIA prisons had no access to lawyers, nor were
they informed of their location. The prisoners are said to have been
subjected to torture, including waterboarding, deprivation of sleep and subjection
to extreme temperatures. The techniques and the
detentions were part of a system of "extraordinary renditions"
under which the U.S. extracted information from terrorism suspects in
countries where it had liberty to apply harsher interrogation methods. The authorities of Poland
and other Central and Eastern European countries have been accused of lack of
cooperation and even of refusing to answer questions from international
bodies. The governments say the evidence presented in the reports is circumstantial
and the sources anonymous. In August last year, six
months after the centrist-liberal government of the Civic Platform (PO) took
office, Poland's National Prosecutor's Office began probing the issue. Amnesty International has
said it will help investigators contact former CIA detainees who may have
been detained in Poland. The investigation has gained
momentum after the change of administrations in the U.S. and Poland. The
centrist cabinet of Prime Minister Donald Tusk represents the only major political
force that had nothing to do with past cooperation with the CIA, and has
little to fear from the results of the investigation. Press reports say the
National Prosecution Office has gained access to top-secret documentation
showing that officials from the previous right-wing cabinet had knowledge of
the existence of a CIA-run prison near the intelligence school in Stare
Krejkuty in north-eastern Poland. The confidential
investigation will allegedly target some of the highest- ranking state officials,
such as former prime ministers Leszek Miller and Jaroslaw Kaczynski and
former president Aleksander Kwasniewski. Officials could be accused
of overstepping their authority and violating the Polish constitution and
international commitments to which Poland subscribes. "There is now a major
emphasis on the fact that a part of Polish territory has been subjected to
U.S. control, creating an extra-territorial sphere without any international
agreement," Adam Bodnar from the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in
Poland told IPS. The Polish government is
also suspected of having offered up to 20 intelligence officers to help their
U.S. colleagues with logistics, but few believed they were actually present
in any of the interrogations. "The question of
torture there cannot be ignored, including the possibility of negligence by
Polish authorities in preventing that kind of crime," Bodnar says. Politicians of all
affiliations are now denying the detention of terrorism suspects on Polish
soil, or are referring to state secrecy to avoid divulging information. But politicians can no
longer hide behind Polish confidentiality laws after Tusk freed top officials
targeted by the investigation from any obligation to keep state secrets. "Many politicians have
testified, but we don't know yet what they have said to the prosecutor
because the investigation is secret," Bodnar told IPS. So far Polish officials only
admit to CIA flight stopovers on Polish soil on their way to the U.S.-run
Guantanamo prison in Cuba. Similar stopovers are believed to have occurred in
the Czech Republic, Germany, Britain, Slovakia, Norway, Spain and Portugal. The Polish prison was
allegedly set up during the office term of the Democratic Left Alliance
(SLD). The government that followed in 2005, led by the rightist Law and
Justice (PiS), is believed to have covered up the case for the sake of good
relations with the U.S. The investigation has
enemies in both politics and the media, with arguments ranging from the need
to protect state secrets and avoiding a terrorist attack on Poland, to
reminding the public of the importance of good Polish-U.S. relations. It was U.S. media that first
published reports of CIA prisons in Poland. For years Polish media and the
judiciary did not take the allegations seriously. In 2006, a Polish
government commission concluded that the allegations were unfounded. External link: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46659 |