WARSAW, Poland: Europe’s top human rights court ruled Thursday that Poland violated the European Convention on Human Rights by allowing the CIA to imprison and abuse two alleged terrorists on Polish soil.
In its ruling the court in Strasbourg, France, said that Poland failed to stop the “torture and inhuman or degrading treatment” of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, who were transported to Poland in 2002.
It ordered Poland to pay 130,000 euros ($175,000) to Zubaydah, a Palestinian terror suspect, and 100,000 euros ($135,000) to al-Nashiri, a Saudi national charged with orchestrating the attack in 2000 on the USS Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors.
Lawyers for the suspects, both of whom are being held at Guantanamo Bay, say they were held at a CIA “black site” in northern Poland between 2002 and 2003.
The court also faulted Poland for failing to conduct an effective investigation into the matter. The government launched an investigation in 2008 but there are no signs that it is close to coming to a conclusion.
Poland’s Foreign Ministry said it could not immediately comment because its legal experts still needed to examine the 400-page ruling. But President Bronislaw Komorowski called the judgment “embarrassing” to Poland, and damaging both financially and to its image.
Human rights lawyers representing the suspects hailed the judgment.
“This is a historic ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which has become the first court to confirm the existence of a secret CIA torture center on Polish soil between 2002 and 2003, where our client Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was held and tortured,” said Amrit Singh, a lawyer at the Open Society Justice Initiative who represented al-Nashiri before the court.
“The court’s findings include a damning indictment of the U.S. military commission system, where our client is now facing trial for his life, and also a condemnation of the death penalty itself,” Singh said. -AP