HUNT FOR CIA ‘BLACK SITE’ IN POLAND
By Nick Hawton
BBC News, Szymany, Poland
/europe/6212843.stm
2006/12/28 00:25:32 GMT
I stood at the end of the frozen runway, peering through the mist,
trying to make out the terminal building in the distance.
It was exactly at this spot, and under the cover of darkness, that
the CIA planes did their business.
"They always followed the same procedure," says Mariola Przewlocka,
the manager at the remote Szymany airport in north-east Poland when
the strange flights arrived during 2003.
"We were always told to keep away. The planes would stay at the end
of the runway, often with their engines running. A couple of military
vans from the nearby intelligence base would go up to them, stay a
while and then drive off, out of the airport.
‘Cash payments’
"I saw several of these flights but never saw inside the vans because
they had tinted windows and they never stopped at the terminal
building.
"Payment was always made in cash. The invoices were made out to
American companies but they were probably fake," says Mrs Przewlocka.
In September 2006, President Bush admitted what had been suspected
for a long time – that the CIA had been running a special programme
to transport and interrogate leading members of Al-Qaeda, away from
the public spotlight.
Human rights groups have expressed concerns that the prisoners may
have been tortured.
The hunt has been on ever since to locate the secret prisons, or
"black sites" as they are known.
Poland and Romania have been named by investigators as hosting
such sites.
The claims are denied by both governments.
CIA landings
After a week of meetings in smoky Warsaw restaurants and coffee bars
with Polish intelligence sources, airport workers and journalists,
I obtained what I had been looking for, and something that nobody
in authority wanted to reveal, the flight log of planes landing at
Szymany airport.
They confirmed my eyewitness’s account – that a well-known CIA
Gulfstream plane, the N379P, had made several landings at the airport
in 2003.
The plane has been strongly linked to the transportation of Al-Qaeda
terrorists.
Another plane, a Boeing 737, had flown direct from Kabul to this
remote Polish airport.
"There is no particular reason for a Gulfstream to stop there. So
there has to be a reason why the plane is stopping there and the fact
that everyone is trying to conceal this reason makes it all the more
interesting to try to find out what it is," says Anne Fitzgerald from
Amnesty International.
I followed the route of the military vans from the airport to the
nearby secret Polish intelligence base at the village of Stare
Kiejkuty.
Surrounded by double-lined fences, security cameras and thick pine
forest, visitors are not welcome.
‘Secret prison’
Within five minutes of stopping the car I was approached by a man in
a military uniform who made it clear he wanted me to leave.
Was this where a CIA secret prison had been located?
A committee of European parliamentarians who investigated the CIA
secret prison programme subsequently concluded in a report:
"In the light of… serious circumstantial evidence, a temporary
secret detention facility may have been located at the intelligence
training centre at Stare Kiejkuty."
I think it’s quite probable there was a kind of transfer site,
a black site, in Poland.
Jozef Pinior, Polish politician
Others go further. Marc Garlasco is a senior military analyst with
Human Rights Watch.
He says: "It’s almost a foregone conclusion that Poland hosted a CIA
Black Site."
But the authorities in Poland do not want to talk about it.
All requests for interviews with government ministers were rejected.
The European parliamentarians met a similar wall of silence.
One civil servant from the prime minister’s office claimed a secret,
internal inquiry had concluded there had been no "black site"
in Poland.
Others disagree.
"I think it’s quite probable there was a kind of transfer site, a
black site, in Poland. There is a Kafka-like mood in Warsaw. No one
from the government has the will to answer our questions," says Jozef
Pinior, a senior Polish politician, who has called for a commission
to investigate the claims.
With Polish troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, and with the United
States as the country’s key ally, there is no desire to delve into the
secret deals made in the secret war against international terrorism.
The US State Department has said it always complies with its laws
and treaty obligations and respects the sovereignty of other countries.
But the truth of Poland’s role may soon emerge.
The new Democrat-controlled US Congress may begin its own investigation
into the CIA secret prisons programme in the next few months.
The search for Poland’s secret CIA prison is broadcast in Global
Account for the first time at 23.06 GMT on Thursday 28 December on
BBC World Service.
A longer version of the same programme, "Chasing Shadows", will be
broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 20.00 on Tuesday 2 January , repeated
Sunday 7 January at 17.00.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
