Guantanamo detainee wants probe into CIA "torture" in Poland

Sep 21, 2010, 14:23 GMT

Warsaw - Lawyers representing a prisoner at the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camp on Tuesday asked prosecutors to investigate his treatment at an alleged CIA secret prison in Poland.

Lawyers working with the Open Society Justice Initiative, a human rights organisation, filed the application in the Polish capital Warsaw on behalf of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is suspected in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

The lawyers said they have demanded an inquiry and prosecution of those involved in Nashiri's 'transfer, detention and torture on Polish soil.' The application calls for Polish public officials and witnesses to be examined.

The lawyers claim al-Nashiri was detained and tortured sometime between 2002 and 2006 in the secret prison in north-east Poland.

He is the first victim of the CIA program to take legal action, they said in a statement on Tuesday.

'We hope that the prosecutor will heed this call for a serious investigation into al-Nashiri's ill-treatment,' said Amrit Singh, senior legal officer for the Open Society Justice Initiative. 'The quest for accountability for the CIA's illegal rendition program must continue in Europe, especially as US courts appear to be closing their doors to victims of this program.'

Flight logs obtained from Polish officials in February confirm that CIA planes landed in Poland during 2003, in what human rights groups suspect were rendition-linked flights.

The logs, which were obtained by human rights organisations, showed that CIA-chartered planes landed in Szymany, north-eastern Poland, at least six times in 2003.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch claimed in a 2005 report that secret CIA prisons in Poland were used to house suspected terrorists from Afghanistan.

Polish authorities have denied allegations that CIA prisons were located on their soil. Prosecutors have been investigating the allegations since 2008, but have not released their findings.