“Gazeta Wyborcza”: Polish prosecutors are considering charging the highest rank officials for war crime – the President and Prime Minister – for the existence of secret CIA prisons in Poland. Does this mean that they have evidence for their existence?

Adam Bodnar secretary of the management of Helsińska Fundacja Praw Człowieka: We can only guess what evidence the prosecution can have, as the investigation is fully classified. This crime could consist of handing over part of our territory under American jurisdiction, through creating an ex-territorial base and allowing the possibility, that people could illegally be deprived of freedom, and perhaps even tortured.

Officials possibly didn’t prevent this, and furthermore agree for Polish jurisdiction and Polish control over what is happening there. This could be classified as helping in committing a crime.

Such actions can be recognised as contradictory with the Polish Constitution, as well as international agreements binding Poland. However, it’s possible to pull these officials into liability in front of the State Tribunal.

Public knowledge about Polish co-operation with the CIA on the issue of prisons in Poland for people suspected of terrorism isn’t low. It’s known when and how many times CIA planes landed in Poland.

– What we know, is the consequence of actions taken by many institutions over years. We have to grant justice to senator Dick Marty, who lead the commission of inquiry as part of the Council of Europe, which in June 2006 as the first institution became seriously engaged in this issue. Afterwards the European Parliament engaged in this and appointed a special commission in January 2007.

Polish authorities ignored the work of these institutions, they didn’t want to co-operate with them, and politicians – with the exception of member of European Parliament Józef Pinior – consequently denied any accusations.

Finally we reached the opinion in the report of the European Parliament, that there’s “obvious lack of will for co-operation from the Polish government”.

– What’s worse, is that, the version that these are false accusations, was accepted in Poland not only just after the discovery of the possibility of existence of such prisons in Poland, but was also consequently upheld. For example, recently we received a copy of correspondence between Member of Polish Parliament Karol Karski with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from 17 May 2007. Karski states that Poland closed the investigation and that it denies all the speculations in the theme of existence of CIA prisons in Poland.

Currently, the authorities already posses documents confirming the landing of planes on the Szymany and Warsaw airports. Recently, in the course of access to public information Helsinki  Foundation for Human Rights received data concerning the routes of these airplanes and their codes, which allows to establish their status and mission. And recently we received from the Border Guard Office a confirmation of the number of passengers and crew on board of these planes.

It’s known that the first CIA plane arrived in Poland on the 5 December 2002, and the last on 22 September 2003. In total there were seven landings in Szymany and two in Warsaw. And we know that in Szymany passengers left the planes, and there was less of those returning than entering.

On the first plane in December 2002 there were seven passengers and the crew, and it left Poland without passengers, and the last on 22 September 2003 no one arrived, but five passengers left.

We suspect that this was when the prison in Poland was liquidated. Subsequent prisons were created in Romania, and then in Lithuania. For example, we identified one plane landing in Warsaw in 2005, which could have “served” the prison existing in Lithuania.

How do we know what happened in Poland with the passengers of these flights?

– There are only traces, but there’s no strong evidence. The personnel working in the Szymany Airport confirmed that these planes were served with the use of special procedures (cars with black windows etc.). There are analyses of routes and dates of flights of these airplanes, as well as dates of capturing people suspected of terrorist activity and their transfers to various places, before finally reaching Guantanamo.

There’s also the report of UN commentators dealing with torture from January 2010, who investigated this case and indicated that Poland was one of the places, where such prisons were located. There are anonymous testimonies of ex-CIA officers, that such a prison existed in Poland.

There’s a testimony given to the International Red Cross by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that when he was imprisoned, he was given a bottle of water with a label on which the address of the website ended in “pl”. He also remembered that there was snow and that the heating system was very old-fashioned.

It should be remembered that the USA has no interest in exposing their co-operation with the Polish intelligence, because they would have to reveal secret obligations towards their ally.

And the group of Polish officers, who were supposed to be delegated to help the Americans?

– We have no evidence that that’s how it was. There are only unconfirmed press reports. International reports mentioned this, but they referred to the Polish press.

It’s good that after five years since revealing the first facts we know more. At the beginning there were only denials.

– If not for the consequent work of international and non-governmental organisations, we would still know very little about this case. The decision about initiating proceedings fell in 2008, three years after the case was revealed. And it’s only now that we can talk about facts, and politicians can’t claim any longer that CIA planes didn’t land in Poland.

From the point of view of the ability of our democracy to clarify sins Poland is accused of it doesn’t look good. What did the parliamentary commission for the intelligence service do? What control over the intelligence does parliament have? How could politicians deny for so long facts which most probably took place and were contradictory with Polish Constitution?

I am also worried by the complete lack of co-operation between our government and international institutions. We are members of the Council of Europe, the European Union and we completely ignored the actions undertaken by these institutions.

Do you understand the reason of Polish authorities if substantially in 2002 they agreed for co-operation with the CIA, which involved imprisoning terrorists in Poland?

– No, I don’t understand, because such a decision would be contradictory with the Polish Constitution. Intelligence service can co-operate together on various fields, however the intelligence is bound with the law and constitutional. It can’t be, that we do our allies a favour, which is contradictory with our law.

Isn’t the war with terrorism a higher reason of state?

– It isn’t. It can’t be that a few politicians outside parliamentary control make decisions, which can turn out to be grossly contradictory with the Constitution. They took an oath for it. Public officials can’t break the Constitution. It’s there for a purpose: so that officials can’t say – as Richard Nixon did in his time – that if the president does something, it can’t be unlawful.

*Published in daily newspaper „Gazeta Wyborcza” on 05 August 2010.

The original of the article available at: http://wyborcza.pl/1,75478,8215326,Co_dzis_wiemy_o_wiezieniach_CIA_w_Polsce.html