Prosecutor’s office response to questions about secret CIA prisons

The HFHR has received the response of the Appellate Prosecutor’s Office in Cracow to the motion for access to public information regarding the investigation into the alleged secret CIA prisons in Poland (case no. Ap V Ds. 12/12/S).

The Prosecutor’s Office announced that the investigation was extended until 11 June 2013. It further stated that the legal grounds for submitting the motion to extend inquiry was art. 310 (2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, whereas the factual basis of the decision was the need to supplement the evidence in order to establish the facts of the case in their entirety.

Furthermore, the Prosecutor’s Office declared that two witnesses had been recently interviewed in the case. It also informed the Foundation that the collected evidence had been further supplemented by the on-site inspection reports and the reviews of numerous documents as well as information important for the investigation obtained from other state bodies and international organisations.

So far, prosecutors have collected 30 volumes of primary case files with evidentiary materials, and this figure does not include auxiliary and analytic materials as well as documents awaiting translation and the documents which are received by the Prosecutor’s Office on an ongoing basis.

The work on another motions for international legal aid is in its final stage. A whole range of materials from investigations before military boards conducted by the US authorities, and organisations whose statutory objectives include monitoring CIA operations, such as Amnesty International or Open Society Justice Initiative, were examined to properly draw up the motions.

The Prosecutor’s Office also stated in its response that from the moment the investigation was taken over by the Appellate Prosecutor’s Office in Cracow no decision on presenting charges to any person had been made and that it was not possible to name a date on which the investigation will be officially closed.

As regards questions concerning the delivery of the information on the proceedings to the ECtHR, the Prosecutor’s Office recommends to address the Plenipotentiary of the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights. The Prosecutor’s Office further stated that it wasn’t a party to the ECtHR proceedings and thus didn’t feel competent to provide information to the Strasbourg Court, despite its desire to offer any possible assistance to the Polish Government in developing documentation for the purposes of the case pending in the Strasbourg court.