adminSiemiatkowski refused to comment on the matter, citing the country’s secrecy laws. However, he did not deny the report.
Rumours about Poland hosting a CIA-run prison had circulated for years, though the country’s authorities dismissed them as absurd. However, the UN and the Council of Europe had long claimed they had evidence of the site’s existence.
Former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and former Prime Minister Leszek Miller both repeatedly denied the knowledge of the prison.
The official investigation into a CIA-run prison in Poland started in 2008, a year after Donald Tusk took office. It took three years for evidence of the site to come to light.
Allegedly, a secret interrogation facility for terror suspects was operating in Stare Kiejkuty, a small village in remote Poland, from December 2002 to the fall of 2003, “depriving prisoners of war of their freedom” and “allowing corporal punishment.”
Earlier, two prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, Abd al Rahim al Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, claimed they were prisoners at this ‘black site.’ Polish prosecutors have already given the two “victim status”.
Among other possible detainees are self-proclaimed 9/11 terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, perpetrator of the 2000 USS Cole bombing Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, and Palestinian terror suspect Abu Zubaydah.
According to the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, up to eight prisoners underwent “extraordinary rendition” to be tortured in Poland.
The harsh interrogation techniques used by the American spooks included waterboarding, starvation, cooling of the body, visual and acoustic deprivation for extended periods of time, slamming prisoners against walls, and mock execution, among many other methods.
Naturally, torture is not allowed in any European country, Poland included. If it is proven that Poland did in fact allow torture to take place at a CIA facility in their country, the matter could be taken before the European Court of Human Rights. The prosecution of Polish and American agents would also remain a distinct possibility.
“We can think about Polish intelligence officers who most probably somehow collaborated with the CIA in establishing this site. We can think about the CIA officers, because if they made it [tortures] in the territory of Poland – it is a crime,” human rights lawyer and head of the legal division at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights Dr Adam Bodnar told RT.
“But as you most probably know, the US authorities would not give any data regarding them and would not allow them to be extradited,” he concluded.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk fully supports the high-profile case against the former senior official. — RT.
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