CIA has secret prisons in Poland

Human Rights Watch stuck to its claim that Poland served as the CIA's main base in Europe for holding and interrogating terrorist suspects in remarks printed Friday, even as the country's leaders continue to vigorously deny any involvement. Marc Gerlasco, an intelligence expert for the New York-based organization, told Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza that Human Rights Watch had documents corroborating its case about Poland, and showing Romania was a transit point for moving prisoners. "Operation on such a scale could not have happened without the knowledge of the Polish authorities," he told Gazeta in an interview in Geneva, Switzerland. "There are people who took part in it, there are flight records." Gerlasco told the newspaper about 25 important terror suspects were interrogated in Poland near a former military airport in Szymany, in northern Poland, and in another much larger facility in the south of the country.

He did not show the newspaper the documents that he said were in his organization's possession, but said all relevant material has been passed to Swiss lawmaker Dick Marty, who has been tasked by the Council of Europe to investigate. This week, Poland's outgoing President Aleksander Kwasniewski stressed that "there are no such prisons or such prisoners on Polish territory" and on Nov. 28 went further, saying "there never have been" such jails.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz said Poland will open its doors to Marty's investigation and added his country was "ready to show everything that moves in Poland to guarantee that there are no prisons or such places in Poland", informs the AP. N.U.