New evidence of a secret torture prison

[jefferson_dem]

Source: Der Spiegel.

New evidence of a secret torture prison
It has long been clear that the CIA used the Szymany military airbase in Poland for extraordinary renditions. Now there is new evidence of a secret torture prison nearby.
By John Goetz and Britta Sandberg

Editor's note: This article originally appeared in Der Spiegel.

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Apr. 28, 2009 |

Only a smattering of clouds dotted the sky over Szymany on March 7, 2003, and visibility was good. A light breeze blew from the southeast as a plane approached the small military airfield in northeastern Poland, and the temperature outside was 2 degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit). At around 4 p.m., the Gulfstream N379P -- known among investigators as the "torture taxi" -- touched down on the landing strip.

On board was the most important prisoner the U.S. had been able to produce in the war on terror: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, also known as "the brains" behind al-Qaida. This was the man who had presented Osama bin Laden with plans to attack the U.S. with commercial jets. He personally selected the pilots and supervised preparations for the attacks. Eighteen months later, on March 1, 2003, Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan by U.S. Special Forces and brought to Afghanistan two days later. Now the CIA was flying him to a remote area in Poland's Masuria region. The prisoner slept during the flight from Kabul to Szymany, for the first time in days, as he later recounted:

"My eyes were covered with a cloth tied around my head. A cloth bag was then pulled over my head … I fell asleep ... I therefore don't know how long the journey lasted."

Jerry M., age 56 at the time, probably sat at the controls of the plane chartered by the CIA. The trained airplane and helicopter pilot had been hired by Aero Contractors, a company that transferred prisoners around the world for U.S. intelligence agencies. According to documents from the European aviation safety agency Eurocontrol, Jerry M. had taken off from Kabul at 8:51 a.m. that morning. Only hours after landing in Poland, at 7:16 p.m., he took off again, headed for Washington.

A large number of Polish and American intelligence operatives have since gone on record that the CIA maintained a prison in northeastern Poland. Independent of these sources, Polish government officials from the Justice and Defense Ministry have also reported that the Americans had a secret base near Szymany airport. And so began on March 7, 2003, one of the darkest chapters of recent American -- and European -- history.

Obama under pressure

It was apparently here, just under an hour's drive from Szymany airport, that Sheikh Mohammed was tortured exactly 183 times with waterboarding -- an interrogation technique that simulates the sensation of drowning -- in March 2003 alone. That averages out to eight times a day. And all of this happened right here in Europe.

Read more: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/04/28/poland_prison/print.html

[alfredo]

1. I guess Auschwitz was too obvious.

[asjr]

2. But the intention was similar.

[alfredo]

5. bush getting back to his family roots.

[cliffordu]

4. EXACTLY wtf I thought...

disgusting.

[saigon68]

29. A whole Cabal of War criminals

But Ram Emaul and his boss will do nothing.

[alfredo]

38. Obama isn't in law enforcement. The DoJ is the right place, and is where

we need to put pressure. You can do it through your reps and the media. Send in those cards and letters to the editor. Use examples from Jane Mayer's book "The Dark Side."

A veteran's voice carries more weight on this subject. Do it.

[Wizard777]

27. If Poland can't go 100 years without an atrocity. We should nuke them.

[derby378]

34. ???

Your anger is misplaced. Poland, throughout its history, has been overrun by the Tartars, the Prussians, the Nazi Germans, and the Russians (twice), but still managed to bounce back. The Poles know what oppression feels like, and I don't think they would have consciously allowed this to go on had they known.

Besides, the Poles are my people, so there's a personal aspect to all this. Rozumiesz?

[SLSmith]

3. Der Spiegel reporting on US Torture in Poland

Yep - Democracy has come a long way in the last 65 years!

[fascisthunter]

6. just like the nazis

and every other group of extremist nutcases

[saigon68]

30. God help the next amerikan the other side captures

[cliffordu]

42. No kidding.

[Big_Mike]

44. Immaterial, totally immaterial

What about Daniel Pearl or Nick Berg?

Berg's beheading was supposedly in response to Abu Ghraib.

Has our number of decapitations increased from zero yet?

We should never have lowered ourselves to "harsh methods" but there is NO comparison the terrorists.

**correction due to incorrect word choice**

[Mnemosyne]

7. I bet * wishes

he'd let Poland be forgotten after all.

:puke:

War criminal.

[shraby]

8. Maybe that's why Bush in a debate with Kerry

in 2004 said "Don't forget Poland". Only no one understood the underlying message.

[alfredo]

13. I wonder if this was set up when Cheney went to Poland. Remember he

toured Auschwitz. It was probably to remind him of the power of the bush family.

[Bluenorthwest]

28. I remember Cheney in that puffy parka at Auschwitz

Looking like a reject from some Outward Bound program, while the rest of the world leaders present were dressing in appropriate attire. I remember his bored posture and expression.

[alfredo]

39. I'm sure he got a few ideas he could put before Yoo and Addington.

[Tim01]

9. Prisons will open, prisons will close, people will be moved around.

And the correct people will have plausible deniability. There may even be some scapegoats.
The United States of Corporate America.

[Xipe Totec]

10. Did we forget Poland?

again?

[nytemare]

19. Beat me to it.

I don't think * will ever forget Poland.

[Solly Mack]

11. K&R

[starroute]

12. Larisa Alexandrovna covered this two years ago

Nice to see it all being confirmed, though.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Sovietera_compound_in_Poland_was_site_0307.html

[seemslikeadream]

14. yes it is

:hi:

[No Elephants]

15. Diane Feinstein, who was probably being briefed on this all along, is NOT

the person to *investigate* this.

Congressional committees and commissions are nothing but showboating. Independent commissions are a joke. Warren Commission? 911 Commission? Please.

Without the rule of law, we are nothing.

Let people know you stand for morals, ethics and the rule of law. Demand a special prosecutor. Let them know you intend to vote in 2010 and 2012 based on this issue.

www.house.gov

www.senate.gov

http://www.usdoj.gov/contact-us.html

/www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

[saigon68]

31. There is no Law or Golden Rule

ie

Him that has the gold---makes the rule.

[grahamhgreen]

16. No doubt we already have one here in the US - after all, they're secret!

[saigon68]

33. Cheney is there right now in his "Hidey Hole"

[jeff30997]

17. K&R

I wonder how many of those gulags truly exist around the world.This is just the proverbial

tip of the iceberg.

[snot]

18. Check this out:

(and thank artists you know for their work) go to http://www.appliedautonomy.com/terminalair/index.html and click on Launch flight viewer (you may have to give it a few minutes to load).

Artists have been tracking dark flights since 2001.

[democrank]

20. K & R

[peacetalksforall]

21. Remember this. Coalition Partners. The obvious m.o. was that the coalition

partners were sending soldiers to Iraq. Countries who had no soldiers to send or could not send any were able to supply other forms of aid. Cheney and Rumsfeld made a list. Deals flew. Some provided flyovers and fueling stops. Others had nothing to do with torture. Perhaps money laundering. Storage of things other than humans beings.

This is where our stolen money was used. Didn't pass through GAO. They had their own money system.

When you take their want list and total the costs - we will see where our kids and grandchildren education and future went.

Remember also ... our Cheney government admitted that our intelligence departments had few Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, etc. speaking employees. Speed was their need - they had to take the country fast to take control of the pipelines - their sole purpose. The need for intelligence was security of pipelines and the military operations, prevention of backlash. All that stuff about who did 9-11 was to gain control of intelligence for corporate protection and expansion. They paid for it with our money - the gas and oil corporations did not write the checks.

Whose checks did Jerry M, deposit? Or was it all cash? We've heard about the cash movements. Who was the comptroller. Who is the comptroller now? The torture is still going on. Right?

[peacetalksforall]

22. There is still Roumania to look at. One or more of the neighboring 'stan' countries. Diego Garcia.

Islands are ideal. Especially ones where the Brits throw out the people and sell the island to the U.S.

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

37. Romania?

[Soylent Brice]

23. i can't imagine how much more evidence it would take before

it would be absolutely unavoidable to prosecute.

does anyone else feel... ill? you're raised to believe how morally superior amurikans are to the rest of the world. you're raised to believe how great we are, and how much we help the world. they (school, family, etc.) made us out to be some type of global salvation.

what the fuck will it take to get investigations going?

[sammythecat]

35. I hear what you're saying.

The fact that this is still being debated, and the ultimate outcome in doubt, disturbs me greatly. Things are looking hopeful, the pressure is increasing, but I still have a lingering fear that these bastards are going to get away with it. The rot in this situation is deep and widespread. There are a lot of guilty people, with a lot of power and influence, who will use every bit of that power and influence to squelch this.

I was raised with the same beliefs about our country as you, and no matter how naive or unrealistic those beliefs may be, we could always, at the very least, point to them as American ideals. However haltingly, we were always striving toward becoming a just, humane, and righteous country. Those who share guilt in these disgraceful acts have pissed all over that. Those American ideals are over and done with as far as I'm concerned unless there is a COMPLETE and OPEN investigation to expose, and hold accountable, those responsible for this shame. The world and the American citizenry have to be assured that this was a horrible aberration that will never be tolerated by this country.

[lavndrblue]

24. Actually

Raw Story had this story 2 years ago............

[Joanne98]

25. "What about Poland?"

[Hubert Flottz]

26. “Arbeit macht frei”

"Don't forget Poland!"

GOP = NSDAP The Bush family might be rebuilding their old Buna plant over there...

[saigon68]

32. Ah yes the old "Labor Liberates" notion

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

36. Flights

[saigon68]

41. Too Bad they won't indict these Criminals

This one too

[MasonJar]

40. If you want to see a picture of the Polish people during the Nazi occupation,

read The Zookeeper's Wife, a true account of specific Polish citizens and how they risked the deaths of their entire family to help the Jewish population of Poland survive and escape from the Ghetto and death. It is not the most dazzling writing (by nature writer Diane Ackermann) but it is the most impressive exposition I have ever read of a people risking all for others. Tens of thousands of Poles in the Underground and in their daily lives and on a daily basis helped the Jewish people survive, all the while fighting the Nazi invaders with any resource they could muster. I am not Polish, but I am proud to be in the same humanity as these great people.

[Canuckistanian]

43. "evidence"? Why do we need evidence?

Why not just force the CIA to list EVERY covert prison? The government doesn't do it any more, right?

So what's all this BS about "evidence" as if it were a big, unknowable mystery?

There are documents of this somewhere.

Where's that special prosecutor?

[bottomtheweaver]

45. Seriously. Decommission it, release all records, prosecute torturers.

We might as well get it over with before somebody does it for us.