Probe into 'secret CIA jails'

2008-08-25 14:10

Warsaw - Prosecutors in Poland have launched an investigation into long-running allegations that the country hosted a secret US jail for terrorist suspects, the justice ministry said on Monday.

"I can confirm that such an investigation is ongoing, without giving further details because it falls under secrecy rules," justice ministry spokesperson Grzegorz Zurawski told AFP.

Zurawski would not say why Poland's national prosecutor's office, which is directly responsible to the justice ministry, had decided to launch an investigation now, given that accusations first surfaced in December 2005.

Polish authorities have consistently rejected claims in a string of media reports and a subsequent Council of Europe investigation that Warsaw allowed the CIA, Washington's intelligence agency, to run a secret interrogation centre for captured al-Qaeda suspects in Poland from 2003-2005.

In a report released in June 2007, Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty claimed the alleged prison was part of a "global spider's web" of detentions and illegal transfers spun out around the world by Washington and its allies after the attacks of September 11 2001 on the United States.

Marty also claimed that Romania had hosted a similar facility, but authorities there have also flatly denied his accusation.

Claims rejected

Both Poland and Romania have become staunch US allies since the collapse of their communist regimes in 1989.

In an article published in June, the New York Times cited anonymous CIA officials who said Washington chose Poland to interrogate and torture Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 2001 attacks.

The secret prison was allegedly located at Szymany, a Polish military air base in the north of the country.

The New York Times claimed Poland had been chosen due to its relatively high insulation from the Islamic world - unlike many west European states, its Muslim community is minuscule - and lowered risk of attack or infiltration by al-Qaeda sympathisers.

Eleven senior members of the al-Qaeda network were purportedly held at Szymany before being transferred to north Africa after the row over the alleged Polish prison broke out.

Warsaw rejected the revived claims in June.

Aimed at discrediting the Republican administration

"I see it as an element of the election campaign in the United States," aimed at discrediting the Republican administration, Defence Minister Bogdan Klich said at the time.

The New York Times is regarded as pro-Democrat, and Klich claimed the article was meant to demonstrate that the administration of US President George W Bush "violated international (legal) standards".

Klich is a member of Poland's liberal Civic Platform-run government, but Polish administrations from across the political spectrum have always denied the claims.

Poland was governed by the left-wing Social Democrats in 2003-2005, before the conservative-nationalist Law and Justice party won parliamentary elections.

After the US group Human Rights Watch first made accusations about a prison in December 2005, the Law and Justice government launched an inquiry into the possible existence of a CIA facility on Polish soil, and promised to make the results public.

But only weeks later, Warsaw said it had changed its mind, and said the matter was considered closed.

- AFP