Having no hearts, they put their hands over their wallets

The US is hampering Poland’s investigation into a secret CIA prison by snubbing repeated requests for vital documents, including a Senate report detailing CIA prison locations and practices…

Published in December, the summary of the report by the Senate’s intelligence committee was redacted and did not mention Poland by name, but other facts in it pointed to the country and a secret CIA prison operating there from 2002 to 2003, where terror suspects were submitted to harsh treatment [they mean torture].

Piotr Kosmaty, spokesman for the Appeals Prosecutor’s Office in Krakow that is doing the investigation, said Poland immediately asked US justice authorities for a full version of the document, but has had no response. Previous requests for documents and questioning of the alleged victims – now held in Guantánamo Bay –were ignored, he said, and at one point the US authorities said that providing materials would be against US national interests…

The European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that Poland violated the rights of terror suspects Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri by allowing the CIA to imprison them and by failing to stop the “torture and inhuman or degrading treatment” of the inmates.

The court ordered Poland to pay compensation to the two men. Warsaw said it would abide by the ruling.

The US report prompted Polish leaders at the time, Aleksander Kwasniewski and Leszek Miller, to admit – after years of denials – that they authorised a prison, but not torture.

The world waits for Bush and Cheney to be tried for their war crimes – including illegal detention and torture.