Europe rights court hearing on secret CIA prisons

[unhappycamper]

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/crime/article/Europe-rights-court-to-hear-of-secret-CIA-prisons-5029775.php

Europe rights court hearing on secret CIA prisons
By GREG KELLER, Associated Press
Updated 6:38 am, Tuesday, December 3, 2013

STRASBOURG, France (AP) — Europe's human rights court shone a rare public light Tuesday on the secret network of European prisons that the CIA used to interrogate terror suspects, reviving memories and questions about the "extraordinary renditions" that angered many on this continent.

At Tuesday's hearing, lawyers for two terror suspects currently held by the U.S. in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, accused Poland of human rights abuses. The lawyers say the suspects fell victim to the CIA's program to kidnap terror suspects and transfer them to third countries, and allege they were tortured in a remote Polish prison.

The case marks the first time Europe's role in the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" of terror suspects reached the European Court of Human Rights. The program, which occurred at the height of former President George W. Bush's war on terrorism, upset many Europeans.

All the prisons were closed by May 2006. Interrogations at sea have replaced CIA black sites as the U.S. government's preferred method for holding suspected terrorists and questioning them without access to lawyers.