WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Europe’s top human rights court
ruled Thursday that Poland violated the rights of two terror suspects by
allowing the CIA to secretly imprison them on Polish soil from
2002-2003 and facilitating the conditions under which they were
subjected to torture.
The ruling by the European Court of Human
Rights marked the first time any court has passed judgment on the
so-called "renditions program" that U.S. President George W. Bush
launched after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Even though
the rendition program has been abolished, lawyers for the suspects
believe that the U.S. and other governments continue to operate in too
much secrecy, using national security as a pretext for intrusive
surveillance and other practices which violate individual liberties.
They welcomed the ruling, hoping it will encourage limits on that kind
of secrecy.
"Governments still engage in abusive practices and try
to hide the facts," said Amrit Singh, a lawyer at the Open Society
Justice Initiative who represented al-Nashiri before the European court.
"The broad message from today’s ruling is to end the impunity of
national governments."
The court, based in Strasbourg, France,
said Poland violated the European Convention on Human Rights by failing
to stop the "torture and inhuman or degrading treatment" of Abd al-Rahim
al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, who were transported to Poland in 2002.
It
ordered Poland to pay 130,000 euros ($175,000) to Zubaydah, a
Palestinian terror suspect, and 100,000 euros ($135,000) to al-Nashiri, a
Saudi national charged with orchestrating the attack in 2000 on the USS
Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors.
Both suspects are now imprisoned at Guantanamo.
Leszek
Miller, the Polish prime minister at the time, slammed the court’s
decision as "unjust and immoral" and said it would be absurd for Poland
to pay a fine to "murderers."
"It’s unjust because it is based on
rumors, speculation and slander. Material that Polish authorities sent
to the court was rejected and not considered by the court," Miller said.
"It’s immoral because the tribunal put the rights of murderers above
the rights of victims."
Asked if he knew at the time that the CIA
was operating a site where it tortured suspects, he said: "I have said
many times that such a prison did not exist and I have nothing more to
say on the matter."
Poland’s Foreign Ministry said it could not
immediately comment because its legal experts still needed to examine
the more than 400-page ruling. It also said it had not yet decided
whether to appeal the ruling to the Grand Chamber of the Court.
But
the office of President Bronislaw Komorowski called the judgment
"embarrassing" to Poland, and damaging both financially and to its
image.
In a statement explaining its ruling, the court said the
interrogations and ill-treatment of the suspects at the facility in
Stare Kiekuty, a remote village in northern Poland, were "the exclusive
responsibility of the CIA and it was unlikely that the Polish officials
had witnessed or known exactly what happened inside the facility."
It
argued, however, that Poland should have ensured that individuals held
in its jurisdiction would not be subjected to degrading treatment. It
also faulted Poland for failing to conduct an effective investigation
into the matter.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Marcin Wojciechowski
said the ruling was premature and that Poland should have been given the
chance to make its own ruling first.
However, the human rights
lawyers who brought the case to Strasbourg did so "after it became clear
that Polish domestic investigations were turning into a cover-up," said
Reprieve, a U.K-based legal group that represented Zubaydah in the
case.
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Thomas Adamson in Paris contributed to this story.