Thursday, October 7, 2010

What happened in Europe's secret CIA prisons?

The CIA used a secret prison in Poland to detain and torture its most important 9/11 suspect, a former top human rights official alleges in a new BBC documentary.

On 7 March 2003 a CIA Gulfstream Jet landed at a remote airstrip in north-eastern Poland. Human rights officials and campaigners are convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the most senior al-Qaeda suspects, was on board.

American agents took him to a secret facility where, he says, he was tortured before being eventually transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

The secret transfer of CIA prisoners is said to have taken place in both Poland and Lithuania - a region where, only a generation ago, people were subject to arbitrary detention and torture at the hands of Communist secret police.

Now, seven years on, the full story of Poland's secret detention site is emerging.

Dick Marty, the Council of Europe's former Rapporteur on Torture, told the BBC: "If I use the judicial standard of proof - and I used to be a magistrate - then I say 'Yes, Mohammed was in Poland. Yes, he was tortured.'"

~ more... ~

No comments:

Post a Comment