Torture payout angers Poles
POLAND IS paying compensation to two terror suspects tortured by the CIA in a secret facility there – prompting outrage among many Poles, who feel they are being punished for American wrongdoing.
It irks many in Poland that their country is facing legal repercussions for the secret rendition and detention programme the CIA operated under then-United States president George W Bush in several countries after the 9/11 attacks.
So far no US officials have been held accountable, but the European Court of Human Rights has shown that it doesn’t want to let European powers that helped the programme off the hook.
The court ordered Macedonia in 2012 to pay 60,000 (NZ$92,000) to a Lebanese-German man who was seized in Macedonia on erroneous suspicion of terrorist ties and subjected to abuse by the CIA.
Polish opposition lawmaker Witold Waszczykowski says he considers the punishment unfair because the suspects were in the sole custody of US officials during their entire stay in Poland in 2002 and 2003, and never under Polish authority.
‘‘This is a case not between us and them – it’s between them and the United States Government.’’
The European Court of Human Rights ruled last July that Poland violated the rights of suspects Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim alNashiri by allowing the CIA to imprison them and by failing to stop the ‘‘torture and inhuman or degrading treatment’’ of them. It ordered Warsaw to pay 130,000 (NZ$199,000) to Zubaydah, a Palestinian, and 100,000 (NZ$153,000) to al-Nashiri, a Saudi national charged with orchestrating the suicide attack on the warship USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, which killed 17 US sailors. Poland appealed the ruling but lost.
Bartlomiej Jankowski, a Polish lawyer representing Zubaydah, said his client wanted the money to go to an organisation that helped women and children displaced or otherwise victimised by war.
Poland apparently received millions of dollars from the US when it allowed the site to operate in 2002 and 2003, according to a report on the renditions programme by the US Senate Intelligence Committee.
Human rights lawyers for the two suspects say neither has ever been found guilty in a court of law. They say they were subjected to torture, and that their rights continue to be violated as they remain held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba without trial.
Zubaydah has been in custody since 2002, with no charges ever being brought against him.