szymany airport: photo - mazuryairfield.com
President Komorowski, said Tuesday that even though revelations that a former intelligence services chief will be charged in connection with the alleged CIA prison in Poland, nothing must come before “the pursuit of truth”.
The head of state was reacting to reports that former head of Poland's intelligence services Zbigniew Siemiatkowski would be charged with “depriving liberty” and complicity in torture by prosecutors investigating claims that Poland hosted a CIA 'black site'.
President Komorowski said that he hoped the prosecution service would be guided by "a sense of responsibility to Poland” but also that this must never be “in conflict with the pursuit of truth” even if that truth is painful.
The new revelations came, Tuesday, as the European Parliament’s (EP) committee on Civil Liberties, Justice & Home Affairs (LIBE) was debating the contents of a report which will be published in September on the illegal capture and transfer of suspected terror suspects to CIA black sites in Europe.
Amnesty International demanded that the EP press individual member states to cooperate with the investigation.
“New data and information which has come to light over the past five years makes it imperative for member states to act,” Julia Hall, Amnesty International’s expert on counter-terrorism and human rights told MEPs.
“The EP process is the perfect opportunity to press reluctant governments to make progress on accountability for operations which involved egregious human rights violations, including torture and enforced disappearance,” she added.
Strangely convenient?
Meanwhile, prime minister at the time that the alleged CIA prison was operative in north east Poland, Leszek Miller (2002 -03) insinuated yesterday that the timing of the revelations by Gazeta Wyborcza and the TVP public broadcaster that a former intelligence chief would be charged was politically convenient for the present government.
“It is strangely convenient that at a time when Solidarity trade unionists are camped under the windows of the Prime Minister's Office in protest against pension reforms,” he told Polish Radio.
Miller, who leads the Democratic Left Alliance opposition party has always denied any knowledge of a CIA black site in Poland.
“It turns out Poland was shoulder to should with Americans,” leader of the liberal Palikot Movement, Janusz Palikot said, Tuesday.
“This is shameful. Poland should apologise for this and Leszek Miller should explain it,” Palikot, who leads the third largest party in parliament, told Radio Zet.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the largest opposition party in parliament, Law and Justice (PiS) said that though he “does not know the results of the [prosecutor's] investigation” when he was prime minister [after Leszek Miller's term of as PM, beginning in 2005] he never received any information to substantiate the “rumours” about a CIA prison in Poland when he was in office.
The prosecution services have refused to comment on the latest twist to a story that broke seven years ago, when Human Rights Watch first made the allegations that Poland, Romania and other countries housed suspected terrorists who had been 'renditioned' by the CIA.
“The investigation into alleged CIA prisons is secret [and we] are unable to communicate any information,” spokesman at the Attorney General's office General Prosecutor's Office Mateusz Martyniuk said Tuesday. (pg)