Polish compensation for CIA torture victims

This 24 July 2014 video is called European Human Rights Court Rules Poland Helped CIA Torture Prisoners.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Poland will pay compensation to CIA torture victims

Saturday 16th May 2015

POLAND announced yesterday that it was paying compensation to two victims of CIA torture at a “black site” — an unacknowledged secret prison — in the country.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled last July that Poland violated the rights of suspects Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri by allowing the US Central Intelligence Agency to imprison them and by failing to stop the “torture and inhuman or degrading treatment” of the inmates.

It ordered Warsaw to pay €130,000 (£94,000) to Mr Zubaydah, a Palestinian, and €100,000 (£72,000) to Mr al-Nashiri, a Saudi national …

The Polish Foreign Ministry announced that it was processing the payments 24 hours ahead of today’s deadline.

But the two men have been held, almost incommunicado, at the illegal US detention camp of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for several years and their lawyers would not say how the payments would benefit them.

The ECHR ruling also required Poland to seek guarantees from the US that the suspects would not face the death penalty.

…

Poland is so far the only country to face legal sanctions over the secret CIA rendition, detention and torture programme carried out under former US president George W Bush.

CIA TORTURE IN VIETNAM AND AMERICA’S FORGOTTEN WHISTLEBLOWER “Determined to shine a light on what he called ‘the truth held prisoner,’ [Anthony J. Russo] blew the whistle on American torture policy in Vietnam and on an intelligence debacle at the center of Vietnam decision-making that helped turn that war into the nightmare it was. Neither of his revelations saw the light of day in his own time or ours and while Daniel Ellsberg, his compatriot and companion in revelation, remains a major figure for his role in releasing the Pentagon Papers, Russo is a forgotten man. That’s too bad. He shouldn’t be forgotten. His is, unfortunately, a story of our times as well as his.” [Barbara Myers, HuffPost]

The CIA’s torture-era leadership won’t repent as their upcoming book seeks to whitewash crimes against humanity: here.