Cuba, December 17: A Guantanamo detainee, who says he was held and tortured in a secret US prison in Poland in 2006, has filed a lawsuit to probe the allegations against CIA agents.
The detainee, Abu-Zubaydah, is Palestinian and he is considered by US officials as al-Qaeda’s number three figure.
“Documents in our possession, which we have handed over to Polish prosecutors, show that he was transferred to Poland, kept in detention and, on Polish territory, subjected to ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,” Zubaydah’s Polish attorney Bartlomiej Jankowski told reporters on Thursday.
Zubaydah was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and according to his lawyers he was first detained at a facility in Thailand before being transferred to Poland, AFP reported.
Since September 2006, he has been held at Guantanamo detention center in Cuba.
Jankowski says he wants to fold Zubaydah’s case into Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri’s lawsuit who has also lodged a complaint for being held and tortured at a US detention center in Poland.
Jankowski wants prosecutors to question both Zubaydah and former US President George W. Bush.
Zubaydah’s US lawyer Joseph Margulies says Zubaydah has been “the guinea pig for the [US] enhanced interrogation program,” and all the techniques have been applied to him.
Reports by media, human rights groups and a Council of Europe investigation have indicated that CIA operated a prison in Poland from December 2002 until late 2003.
Polish officials, however, have repeatedly rejected the reports.
Former CIA officials have admitted that prisoners held there were subjected to various kinds of torture.
The United States is reported to have many secret detention facilities throughout the world.
——–Agencies