Human rights groups welcome Polish report on CIA prisons

Human rights campaigners welcomed on Wednesday a report that prosecutors had charged the former head of Poland's intelligence service for helping set up CIA prisons for al Qaeda suspects in the country at the height of the U.S.-led "war on terror."
Daily Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading Polish newspaper, said on Tuesday that Zbigniew Siemiatkowski was charged as part of a classified investigation into the matter launched in 2008.
Despite reports by the European Parliament and the Council of Europe stating Poland and Romania hosted CIA detention centers, Polish officials have repeatedly denied the existence of such bases on its soil and say U.S. planes were only allowed to land for refueling.
At least two prisoners of the U.S. military jail in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, have said they had been held by U.S. agents in Poland.
[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans]Rights groups say detainees were kept there without court orders and often tortured.[/FONT]

Poland's smaller neighbor, Lithuania, was the first country in Europe to acknowledge it had worked with CIA in establishing two secret detention facilities in 2002-2006.
[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans][/FONT][FONT=arial, helvetica, sans]"Every state that has signed the (United Nations') Convention Against Torture has an obligation not just to prevent torture but to hold accountable officials who authorize or facilitate it," said Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union.[/FONT]

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