ACLU reports that Rahim al-Nashiri’s lawyer’s request to include their client’s treatment at a black site in Poland in the country’s investigation has been successful.
The Polish prosecutor will investigate the detention and torture of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri at a black site in Poland after he was kidnapped and transported there by the CIA.
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Al-Nashiri, who is accused in the 2000 U.S.S. Cole bombing, was granted the status of “injured party” in Poland’s ongoing investigation into torture in response to a September 21 petition from his lawyers.
Jameel Jaffer uses this event to focus on how little our own country has done to hold its torturers accountable.
Today’s announcement that Poland will investigate the torture of Mr. al-Nashiri serves as a stark reminder of how little has been done in the U.S. to hold top officials accountable for torture. Holding torturers accountable is essential to restoring American credibility at home and abroad – the U.S. can no longer remain silent as, one by one, other nations begin to reckon with their own agents’ complicity in the torture program through prosecutions and judicial inquiries.
Of course, at the rate we’re going, there will be no accountability. The statute of limitations on the destruction of the torture tapes will expire in just 11 days. At that point, the CIA will have officially gotten away with destroying the evidence of their torture, including evidence pertaining to al-Nashiri himself.