Guilty as Charged: Poland Was Involved in CIA Torture
17:27 18.02.2015(updated 19:56 18.02.2015)
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has confirmed Poland's involvement in a covert CIA torture program.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has confirmed Poland's involvement in the CIA's covert program of rendition, detention and interrogation, sources say.
It ordered Poland to pay two detainees, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, €100,000 and €130,000 in damages, respectively. The court ruling did not cover the United States, which is outside its jurisdiction.
The ECHR later rejected the Polish government's appeal to its July 2014 ruling, in a move that makes that the court's judgment final.
In July's judgment, the ECHR mentioned Zubaydah and al-Nashiri, who were tortured in a CIA prison on Polish soil in December 2002 and are currently Guantánamo inmates.
The ECHR also said at the time that Poland failed to protect the two men or open an investigation into the matter.
Al-Nashiri and Zubaydah were subjected to the torture technique known as waterboarding, with US government documents showing Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in one month.
Commenting on the ECHR's decision, Helen Duffy, the European lawyer for Zubaydah, urged Poland to 'finally conduct a thorough and effective investigation, and make public information concerning its role and hold those responsible to account".
Duffy expressed hope that Warsaw will 'reengage constructively and reassert its position as a supporter of the rule of law."
The ECHR's decision comes more than a month after the publication by the US Senate Intelligence Committee of a summary of its investigation into the CIA's secret interrogation program.
Commenting on the ECHR's decision, Piotr Kaczynski, Lecturer at the European Institute of Public Administration in the Netherlands, told Radio Sputnik that 'who politically is responsible is a subject for an investigation that probably should take place in Poland right now; the issue should be addressed by the Polish Prosecutor's Office.'
© Sputnik
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