The Raw Story reports that British and Polish intelligence officials have admitted that there was a secret “interrogation and short-term detention facility for suspected terrorists within a Polish intelligence training school with the explicit approval of British and US authorities.”
The Raw Story claims to have seen a memo which indicates that British “Prime Minister Tony Blair told Poland’s then-Prime Minister Leszek Miller to keep the information secret, even from his own government.”
The location of the facility: just outside of the village of Stare Kiejkuty, a “Soviet-era compound once used by German intelligence in World War II” and it is “best known as having been the only Russian intelligence training school to operate outside the Soviet Union.”
Furthermore: it seems that British MI6 and the CIA came up with the plan and invited Poland to ‘join’ the special ‘program’ in 2002. Poland agreed and the program lasted until 2004.
Also interesting to note is that the U.S. and Britain had a somewhat innovative approach:
According to British and Polish intelligence officials, foreign journalists, and EU sources interviewed for this article, the countries participating in the US rendition and detention program and their governments were kept largely out of the loop. Officials say Bush and Blair administration contacts selectively chose politicians in the EU and other countries, keeping their respective governments in the dark.
If The Raw Story‘s report is accurate, and I fear it is, this will be incredibly bad for the image of the U.S. and for the position of Britain and Poland in Europe. If confirmed, this will backfire, and not a little bit. (Other) Europeans aren’t exactly fond of this kind of thing. It’s too secretive, it happens too much in the darkness, it reminds us of totalitarian regimes that made people disappear.
Hell, the people who were interrogated in the campfacility in Poland did disappear (for a while).
And what happened to those people? How were they treated? Were they, indeed, treated according to international law? How do we know? How can we be sure about that, no ‘checks and balances’ existed.
If this will get a lot of attention in European media – and I am sure it will – I fear that relationship between West-European countries and America will worsen significantly. And it’s already not what it once was.
This program is detestable. No true Democracy should advocate the practice of ‘rendition’. Fight terrorism, yes, but do it without breaking the very principles our democracies are built on.
More at Democrats.com and TalkLeft
This has been cross posted at my own blog.
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