2011-06-10 Józef Pinior: "there were regulations about corpses in the CIA prison." EU intervenes

Poland is under increasing pressure to investigate fully whether the CIA operated secret torture and detention facilities in Stare Kiejkuty. As Peter Kemp predicted, the European Parliament has now intervened. In a resolution from the eighth of June it says that it:

"5. Reiterates its call to the US authorities to review the military commissions system to ensure fair trials, to close Guantánamo, to prohibit in any circumstances the use of torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, indefinite detention without trial and enforced disappearances, and reminds the EU institutions and Member States of their duty not to collaborate in, or cover up, such acts prohibited by international, European and national law;"

"7. Calls on the EU and Member States authorities, as well as the US authorities, to ensure that full, fair, effective, independent and impartial inquiries and investigations are carried out into human rights violations and crimes under international, European and national law, and to bring to justice those responsible, including in the framework of the CIA extraordinary renditions and secret prisons programme;"

In the meantime, former MEP Józef Pinior reiterated his allegations against former members of the Polish government, claiming that there was a document signed by the then prime minister Leszek Miller regulating the operations of a secret CIA detention facility in Stare Kiejkuty, also defining the status of corpses inside the facility.

Pinior admits that he never saw the document with his own eyes, but credits a very trustworthy source with this information who he refuses to name. Asked whether this was a source from within Polish intelligence services, he refused to comment. He added that with 30 years experience in politics, he was fully aware of the implications of such a statement.

He describes the document as brief, outlining logistics, and being addressed to the Polish Secret Service, who operates the base in Stare Kiejkuty.

Pinior also claims that Zbigniew Wassermann and Zbigniew Ziobro, who were part of the PiS government succeeding Miller, saw and discussed this document along with four other officials, and that there are minutes of this meeting.

During his work on a European Parliament investigation into CIA rendition, Pinior states to have spoken to members of the Polish Secret Service, who were uneasy about the fact that their facility was used for purposes which were not in their interest.

These revelations, and the new European Parliament resolution follows a turbulent month in which lawyers acting for Abd al-Nashiri filed a complaint against Poland with the European Court of Human Rights, Warsaw prosecutor Jerzy Mierzewski planned to file charges against former members of the Polish government and was subsequently removed from the case, documents were leaked to daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, Gdansk prosecutors opened an investigation against the paper and President Obama visited the country and promised the deployment of F16 as a protection against Russia.

For details see our previous coverage.