Secret CIA prisons in Poland and Romania

This video is about CIA secret prisons in Europe.

From Andy Worthington’s blog:

New Evidence About Prisoners Held in Secret CIA Prisons in Poland and Romania

4.8.10

On Friday, the Polish Border Guard Office released a number of documents to the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, which, for the first time, provide details of the number of prisoners transferred by the CIA to a secret prison in Poland between December 5, 2002 and September 22, 2003, and, in one case, the number of prisoners who were subsequently transferred to a secret CIA prison in Romania. The documents (available here and here) provide important information about the secret prison at Szymany, in north eastern Poland, and also add to what is known about the program in Romania, which has received far less scrutiny.

The existence of the prisons was first revealed in the Washington Post on November 2, 2005, although the Post refrained from “publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior US officials.” However, on November 6, 2005, Human Rights Watch identified the countries as Poland and Romania, and stated that it had seen “flight records showing that a Boeing 737, registration number N313P — a plane that the CIA used to move several prisoners to and from Europe, Afghanistan, and the Middle East in 2003 and 2004 — landed in Poland and Romania on direct flights from Afghanistan on two occasions in 2003 and 2004.”

Although the Polish and Romanian governments denied the claims, Swiss Senator Dick Marty, a Rapporteur for the Council of Europe, concluded in a report in June 2007 (PDF), based on two years’ research and interviews with over 30 current and former members of the intelligence services in the United States and Europe, that he had enough “evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania.” Marty also identified both sites, noting that the flights to Romania flew into the Mihail Kogalniceanu military airfield, and also explained how the flights were disguised using fake flight plans.

In September 2008, a Polish intelligence official confirmed that between 2002 and 2005 the CIA had held terror suspects inside a military intelligence training base in Stare Kiejkuty in north eastern Poland. He said that only the CIA had access to the prison, and that, although Prime Minister Leszek Miller and President Aleksander Kwasniewski knew about it, “it was unlikely either man knew if the prisoners were being tortured because the Poles had no control over the Americans’ activities.”

It was not until March 23, 2009, however, that the first details of specific flights into Szymany were officially confirmed in Poland, when the Polish Air Navigation Service Agency released information about a Lockheed L100-30 Hercules, registration number N8213G, which had flown in on February 4, 2003. This was followed up on September 16 with far more incriminating records, demonstrating that a notorious “torture jet,” a Gulfstream V, registration number N379P, had flown into Szymany on six occasions between February 8 and September 22, 2003 (see here and here), and on June 2 this year, a further release identified a Gulfstream IV, registration number N63MU, which had flown in on July 28, 2005.

Friday’s revelations by the Polish Border Guard Office are, however, even more significant, firstly because they include, for the first time, confirmation that N63MU flew into Poland on December 5, 2002, and secondly, because they provide details of the number of passengers on seven of the flights, as follows:

December 5, 2002: 8 passengers delivered
February 8, 2003: 7 passengers delivered; 4 others flown to an unknown destination
March 7, 2003: 2 passengers delivered
March 25, 2003: 1 passenger delivered
May 6, 2003: 1 passenger delivered
July 30, 2003: 1 passenger delivered
September 22, 2003: 0 passengers delivered; 5 flown to Romania

Who are the “high-value detainees” held in Poland?

The CIA has tapes of 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh being interrogated in a secret overseas prison. Discovered under a desk, the recordings could provide an unparalleled look at how foreign governments aided the U.S. in holding and questioning suspected terrorists: here.

U.S. still holds detainee Pentagon wanted freed in 2004: here.

Political Prisoners in America: here.

Britain: Alleged government proposals to scrap or downgrade annual Foreign Office reports on global human rights abuses suggest the government is putting trade before human rights, Amnesty has claimed: here.

William D. Hartung, TomDispatch: “Have you noticed that Lockheed Martin, the giant weapons corporation, is shadowing you? No? Then you haven’t been paying much attention. Let me put it this way: If you have a life, Lockheed Martin is likely a part of it. True, Lockheed Martin doesn’t actually run the U.S. government, but sometimes it seems as if it might as well”: here.