WARSAW (AFP) – Poland on Thursday ruled out allowing the United States to base secret prisons on its soil if President Donald Trump reinstated the so-called CIA “black sites” overseas.
Asked whether Warsaw would consider hosting such facilities, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said there “was neither any such proposal, nor any room” to discuss the issue, adding: “Of course not”.
Close US NATO allies Poland and neighbouring Lithuania have never officially admitted to hosting secret CIA rendition centres allegedly set up to hold suspects in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York.
Despite a constitutional ban on torture in Poland, its former president Aleksander Kwasniewski publicly acknowledged in 2014 that his country hosted a secret CIA prison where a US Senate report said torture was used against Al-Qaeda suspects.
Trump said Wednesday he thought waterboarding and other interrogation techniques widely seen as torture — and prohibited by law — “absolutely” work, but said he would defer to his CIA and Pentagon chiefs on whether to reinstate them.
The comments from the new Republican president — which echo statements he made on the campaign trail — come as reports suggest the Trump administration may be considering the reinstatement of secret CIA “black site” prisons overseas.
Previous news reports suggested that CIA secret prisons had also been located in Afghanistan, Romania, and Thailand.