Last week the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk confirmed that the head prosecutor of the country is investigating the issue of a secret CIA prison on Polish territory during the period from 2002-2005. Polish politicians had persistently denied the existence of any illegal CIA detention site, where possibly Islamic terrorists were illegally kept and tortured. (09-SEP-08)
There has been a long debate about, whether a secret prison for Al-Qaeda terrorists existed in Stare Kiejkuty, near the Szymany airport in the northeast of Poland. The issue had first been raised in 2005, after an article by the Washington Post. Specific countries had not been mentioned, but referred to as Eastern European democracies. Later the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that illegal detention camps existed in Poland and Romania.
Based on these reports the Council of Europe (CoE) started to investigate the situation. A set of questions was sent out to all member states of the CoE. In the 2006 report by the Swiss senator Dick Marty it was stated, that “Poland only provides a very incomplete reply which cannot be considered as an adequate response or sufficient to put an end to the controversy.” Already then the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (HFHR) urged the Polish government, which was in office at that time, to provide the CoE with the information needed.
However the report in 2006 could not prove the existence of illegal detention sites in Poland. But a second report by the CoE parliamentary assembly in 2007 came to the conclusion, that there is “now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania.” It further finds that prisoners in these facilities were subjected to “interrogation techniques tantamount to torture.” According to the report, the CIA site in Poland was a place for high level prisoners, like for example Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who is set to be the mastermind behind 9/11. Further it is stated, that the former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski knew about and authorized the secret detention site. In June this year another article had been published by the New York Times describing that in Poland existed one of the major centres to hold and transfer people for the fight against terrorism.
Two governments in a row did not release any information about Poland´s involvement in this controversy. Until recently the current centre right government under Donald Tusk had also denied the existence of an illegal prison and did not see the need to further investigate this topic. During the days following the announcement of the prime minister many newspapers articles with new information were published, one of them claiming that a secret document exists, which proofs that the allegations are true. Another newspaper published an anonymous interview with members of the Polish Intelligence Service, who declared that an illegal detention site existed in Poland.
HFHR regularly urged the Polish government to clarify the situation. Letters were sent by HFHR to the Polish authorities reminding them of their duty to act accordingly to human rights standards set in the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It is a small improvement, that now the head prosecutor is dealing with this issue. However, it is still doubtful, whether this inspection will lead to the release of information by the authorities and to the punishment of those, who are responsible.
