Poland ‘pressured’ US into ending CIA torture – former president

WARSAW, Poland – Poland put pressure on the United States into ending its brutal CIA interrogation of Al-Qaeda suspects in a secret prison on Polish soil in 2003, former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski said Wednesday, December 10.

“I told (then US president George W) Bush that this cooperation must end and it did end,” Kwasniewski told TOK FM radio.

He was speaking a day after a scathing US Senate report revealed the CIA had used methods amounting to torture to interrogate prisoners after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Kwasniewski, president between 1995 and 2005, said he raised Polish concerns over CIA activities in Poland face-to-face with Bush at the White House in 2003. 

He said Bush insisted that the intelligence agency’s methods provided “important benefits in security matters”.

“The Americans conducted their activities in such secrecy, that it raised our concern. Polish authorities acted to end these activities and they were stopped under pressure from Poland.”

Kwasniewski’s claim is the first time a senior Polish leader from the time has publicly acknowledged that Poland allowed US secret “black sites” on its soil.

Kwasniewski said he had agreed to “beefed-up intelligence cooperation” with the US but insisted he was unaware that the CIA practised torture at its secret facilities.

The allegations against Poland date back to 2002-2003.

The European Court of Human Rights slammed Poland in July for complicity in torture on its territory of a Palestinian and a Saudi, later sent to the notorious US Guantanamo Bay base.

The court concluded Poland had cooperated in the CIA’s notorious “rendition” programme.

The CIA disputes the findings of the US Senate report, which says 119 detainees were captured and imprisoned in secret CIA “black sites” in countries whose names were redacted. 

Previous news reports suggested that the sites were located in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Thailand.

Polish prosecutors have been probing allegations of the secret CIA prisons since 2008. They said Tuesday they will ask for access to the damning report. – Rappler.com