Europe News

Ex-Polish premier denies report of secret CIA prisons in Poland

Mar 8, 2007, 11:43 GMT

Warsaw - Poland's former prime minister Leszek Miller on Thursday denied a fresh report alleging EU and NATO member Poland had hosted secret jails for terror suspects operated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

'Once again I refute that there were secret prisons in Poland,' Miller said Thursday, quoted by the Polish PAP news agency. 'Tony Blair never spoke with me about this because there was nothing to talk about,' he said.

Raw Story, a US-based internet news source quoted a confidential MI-6 British intelligence document which is alleged to have said British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Miller discussed plans for a short term CIA prison for terror suspect created in a top-security Polish intelligence compound in Stary Kiejkuty, northern Poland.

Blair is to have asked that Miller not inform cabinet ministers about the facility.

The Raw Story report also alleges US plans for transporting terror suspects to Poland were drawn up in 2002 in meeting between Polish intelligence officials, then CIA head George Tenet and MI-6 chief John Scarlett.

Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, Polish intelligence chief in 2002, on Thursday denied any such meetings took place.

He also suggested the information presented by Raw Story could be part of the domestic political battle in the US over who is to succeed current Republican President George W Bush.

International media reports alleging the CIA had opened secret interim prisons for terror suspects from Afghanistan in Poland and Romania first surfaced in late 2005.

A probe into the matter by the European Parliament found no concrete evidence to either confirm or deny such prisons had existed in Poland.