Polish ex-PM could face charges in CIA prison probe: media

WARSAW - Agence France-Presse

Former Polish prime minister Leszek Miller. AFP photo

Fallout from a probe into a possible CIA secret prison in Poland broadened Wednesday with the revelation that a former prime minister could be charged for allowing the "black site" to be built.
 
The Gazeta Wyborcza daily newspaper said Leszek Miller, who was prime minister from 2001-2004 and now heads a left-wing opposition party, could face charges at a special tribunal for having approved the installation of a secret US base in Kiejkuty in northeast Poland.
 
Polish prosecutors did not comment on the report, saying only that no one had been arrested.
 
The revelation came a day after the newspaper reported that former spy chief Zbigniew Siemiatkowski had been charged as part of the investigation.
 
Siemiatkowski told the newspaper of the charge, but Polish authorities, citing state secrecy, did not confirm this. The government has rejected claims of a US Central Intelligence Agency "black site".
 
Polish prosecutors launched an investigation in August 2008 into allegations that Warsaw had allowed the CIA to operate a secret prison on its soil to interrogate top suspects in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
 
The Council of Europe has said the Polish site, opened in December 2002, held several so-called "high-value detainees", and claimed that other secret prisons were also set up in Romania and Lithuania.
 
One suspect thought to have been held in Poland was self-proclaimed 9/11 attacks mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and faces trial at a US military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay.
 
Polish campaigners said in July they obtained official records about seven CIA planes -- five of them carrying passengers -- which landed in 2002 and 2003 at Szymany, a Polish military base in northeast Poland.
 
The Council of Europe has said black site detainees were held in secret, solitary confinement and subjected to "enhanced interrogation" including torture techniques such as waterboarding, or simulated drowning.
 
Two Guantanamo inmates, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, have lodged complaints they were subject to torture on Polish soil.
 
Leftwing politician Janusz Palikot on Wednesday accused Miller of making Poland a terrorism target for letting the CIA operate in the country.
 
Miller denied any wrongdoing and said there were no secret US prisons in Poland. He branded Palikot an "Al-Qaeda spokesman" and decried "leaks" from Polish prosecutors, which he said risked making the country a terror target ahead of the Euro 2012 football championships, being hosted in Poland and Ukraine. Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski said he hoped the probe would eventually be made public "even if the matter is sensitive and could be painful for the Polish state, because this reflects the image of Poland".
 
The US Justice Department rejected in October 2009 a demand from Poland for help in the investigation. The request was made more than six months earlier.