PARIS (NYT) — The European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday that Poland had violated the rights of two terrorism suspects by allowing their transfer to a secret detention center run by the C.I.A. in Poland, where the two men were tortured.
The ruling says Poland failed to prevent the two men — Abu Zubaydah, born in Saudi Arabia, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi citizen — from being subjected to “torture and inhuman or degrading treatment” after they were brought to the prison in northeast Poland. It ordered Poland to pay 100,000 euros, about $135,000, to Mr. Nashiri and $175,000 to Abu Zubaydah. Both are now being held at the American detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Abu Zubaydah is believed to have overseen the operation of guesthouses in Pakistan where terrorism recruits arrived; he vetted them and provided letters of recommendation allowing them to be accepted for training at a paramilitary camp in Afghanistan, a former Guantánamo detainee said in a military court filing, for example. Mr. Nashiri is accused of plotting the 2000 bombing of the American destroyer Cole.
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, pictured, and Abu Zubaydah were taken to a C.I.A. prison in Poland.CreditPool photo by Janet Hamlin
The existence of a C.I.A. “black site” prison in Poland has been widely reported for years, but the United States government considers the list of countries that hosted the prisons to be highly classified. Mr. Nashiri has been charged with war crimes before a military commission at Guantánamo, and prosecutors are fighting a request by his defense team that the government turn over informationrelated to his treatment by the C.I.A., including where he was held.
It was the first case reviewed by the European Court of Human Rights that involved accusations that Europe was complicit in the C.I.A.’s “extraordinary rendition” program, in which terrorism suspects were sent to third countries for detention and interrogation. The court, based in Strasbourg, France, rules on violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. Governments that sign the convention guarantee their citizens basic standards of civil liberties.
Some of the brutal interrogation methods the C.I.A. used on prisoners during the second Bush administration have been criticized as constituting torture and spurred a loud debate in the United States. In addition, human right advocates have condemned the secret rendition program, calling it an unethical way to deny prisoners due process and circumvent the rule of law. Its defenders say it is necessary to combat terrorism.
A C.I.A. spokesman did not respond to a request for a comment on the ruling. A White House spokeswoman, Laura Lucas Magnuson, said: “On the general issue of so-called black sites, we have not and will not confirm any purported locations. The overriding point, however, is that this program no longer exists. President Obama in 2009 — in his first week in office — put an end to the C.I.A.’s detention program.”
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, a former director of the C.I.A., has confirmed that the harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding, which simulates drowning, was used on Abu Zubaydah, Mr. Nashiri and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described architect of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Joseph Margulies, a visiting professor of law and government at Cornell who is one of Abu Zubaydah’s lawyers, called the ruling a seminal decision that would help force a public reckoning in Europe and the United States about the secret rendition program and its tactics.
“It’s the first time a court has condemned a European state for its role in the rendition program,” he said in a telephone interview. “From top to bottom, the case is a comprehensive condemnation of the C.I.A., the black-site program and Poland’s role in it.”
Professor Margulies said the ruling could have legal implications for other European countries, including Romania and Lithuania, which have been accused of participating in the program in cases before the human rights court.
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Terrorism suspect Abu Zubaydah.CreditU.S. Central Command, via Associated Press
Amrit Singh of the Open Society Justice Initiative, a rights advocacy group that brought the case on behalf of Mr. Nashiri, said the ruling ended the impunity for those engaged in abuses connected with the rendition program. The group emphasized that the court had ordered Poland to secure assurances from the United States that Mr. Nashiri would not be subject to the death penalty.
“In stark contrast to U.S. courts that have closed their doors to victims of C.I.A. torture,” Ms. Singh said, “this ruling sends an unmistakable signal that these kind of abuses will not be tolerated in Europe, and those who participated in these abuses will be held accountable.”
The group, which released a detailed report on the rendition program last year, said the European Court of Human Rights was the first court anywhere to publicly confirm the existence of the secret prisons operated by the C.I.A. in Europe.
After his election, Mr. Obama rejected calls for a national commissionto investigate the rendition program, saying he wanted to look forward rather than back. The Senate Intelligence Committee has completed a 6,000-page study of the program that remains classified, although the White House is declassifying the report’s 400-page executive summary.
Poland has never publicly acknowledged hosting a C.I.A. prison, and, as a young democracy that experienced state-sanctioned repression during decades of Communist rule, it had a fierce public debate about its alleged complicity in the program.
Joanna Trzaska-Wieczorek, a spokeswoman for the Polish president’s office, said Thursday that the ruling was “shameful for Poland,” according to the Polish Press Agency.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment, saying it was still studying the ruling.
Adam Bodnar, vice president of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, based in Warsaw, said on TVN24, a leading Polish broadcaster, that a secret prison could not have been organized without the help of the government at the time.
The C.I.A. has never formally revealed the locations of its secret overseas prisons, but intelligence officials, aviation records and news reports have placed them in Afghanistan, Jordan, Romania and Thailand, as well as Poland and other countries. Out of fewer than 100 prisoners held there, roughly 30 were subjected to what the C.I.A. called “enhanced” interrogation techniques, according to agency officials.