Europe’s CIA Inquiry: You Forgot Poland

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Among the most surprising of the European Parliament’s findings — you can read a summary here — is the reluctance of the inquiry to substantiate Dana Priest’s report that Poland hosted a secret terrorism detention facility. It’s a finding that appears underpinned by both a Polish stonewalling of the investigation and a political failure by the European Parliament to call a member-state actively complicit in the detentions:

In an amendment passed with a narrow majority (356 to 323), MEPs noted that, in light of the available “circumstantial evidence”, “it is not possible to acknowledge or deny that secret detention centres were based in Poland.” However, notes the report, “seven of the fourteen detainees” transferred from a secret detention facility to Guantánamo in September 2006 coincide with those mentioned in a report by ABC News (published in December 2005) listing the identities of twelve top Al Qaeda suspects held in Poland.

Regarding the testimonies gathered during their visit to Poland, MEPs conclude that the investigation carried out by the Polish Parliament was not conducted independently and that statements given to the Committee delegation were “contradictory” and compromised by “confusion about flight logs […] which were first said not to have been retained, then said to have probably been archived at the airport, and finally to have been sent by the Polish government to the Council of Europe.”

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