This is not
happening, as it is an incorrect entry in the Baltimore Activist Alert--On
Fri., May 18 at 7:30 PM, the Creative Alliance at the Patterson will host "The
Night of 1000 Dylans." The Creative Alliance is at 3134 Eastern Avenue in
Baltimore. Call 410-276-1651. Tickets are $16, but $11 for members. The
proceeds will go to the Baltimore College Peace Network, the Roots Café and the
Creative Alliance.
The event
will feature The Stone Hill All-Stars (featuring alumni of the Polkats and Two
Legs); Bruce Sprinstone's Tom Chalkley & Craig Hankin; the Junkyard Saints'
Brian Simms, Howard Markman and Sandy Asirvatham. The benefit concert will be
hosted by Geoffrey Himes. Almost every U.S. songwriter of any ambition cites
Bob Dylan as an inspiration, and the best songwriters in the Baltimore-Washington
area are no exception. During this special show to raise money for three of
Baltimore's best community organizations, eight of those singer-songwriters
will play the Dylan songs that mean the most to them. Go to www.creativealliance.org and www.rootscafe.org.
Friday, May 15, 2015
With US Accountability MIA,
Poland to Make Payout for Torture of CIA
Though US officials involved in the program have faced zero
accountability, Poland readies to pay $250,000 for its role in rendition and
torture program
A car drives past barbed-wire fence surrounding a military area
in Stare Kiejkuty village in Poland. (Photo: Kacper Pempel/Reuters)
The people of Poland are expressing outrage on Friday as news
spread that their own government is on the verge of paying more than $250,000
to victims of CIA torture which took place at an agency black site in the
country even as the U.S. government refuses to acknowledge the crime or take
responsibility for the grave human rights abuses that took place under the Bush
administration.
The European Court of Human Rights imposed the
penalty against Poland for its role in the torture of two
individuals— Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri—both of whom were
rendered by the CIA to a secret location in Poland in the wake of 9/11 attacks.
Taken into custody overseas as "suspected terrorists," the men remain
detained by the U.S. government in the offshore prison at Guantanamo Bay.
According
to the Associated Press, "It irks many in Poland that their country
is facing legal repercussions for the secret rendition and detention program
which the CIA operated under then-President George W. Bush in several countries
across the world after the 9/11 attacks. So far no U.S. officials have been
held accountable, but the European Court of Human Rights has shown that it
doesn't want to let European powers that helped the program off the hook."
AP's reporting continues:
[The
court] ruled last July that Poland violated the rights of [the two men] by
allowing the CIA to imprison them and by failing to stop the "torture and
inhuman or degrading treatment" of the inmates.
It
ordered Warsaw to pay 130,000 euros ($147,000) to Zubaydah, a Palestinian, and
100,000 euros ($113,000) to al-Nashiri, a Saudi national charged with
orchestrating the attack in 2000 on the USS Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors.
Poland
appealed the ruling but lost in February. Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna
said at the time that "we will abide by this ruling because we are a
law-abiding country."
Bartlomiej
Jankowski, a Polish lawyer representing Abu Zubaydah, said his client wants the
money he is awarded to go to an organization that helps women and children
displaced or otherwise victimized by war. The exact organization has not been
decided on yet because of limits U.S. officials have placed on Zubaydah's
communications with his lawyers. In the meantime the money will be kept in a
fund, Jankowski said.
A lawyer
for al-Nashiri, Amrit Singh, refused to disclose how his money will be used.
Poland
apparently received millions of dollars from the United States when it allowed
the site to operate in 2002 and 2003, last year's report on the renditions
program by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee said in a section that
appears to refer to Poland though the country name was redacted.
Though Poland long fought off charges of its complicity with the
CIA's torture and rendition program, all indications now show that it will now
submit to the court's order and make the payment. According
to the Los Angeles Times:
Revelations
contained in a U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report five months ago
provided the final pieces of evidence confirming the complicity of Polish
leaders, who had steadfastly denied knowledge of the prison after hints of
their complicity were disclosed in a 2006 European Parliament investigation and
a Polish inquiry still underway eight years after it was launched.
After
release of the American report, Polish jurists and human rights advocates have
stepped up their demands that those ultimately responsible for allowing
criminal activities on Polish soil, former President Aleksander Kwasniewski and
then-Prime Minister Leszek Miller, be held accountable for the excesses that
some say have stained their ex-communist nation's democratic credentials.
After
years of denying that a secret CIA prison ever operated in Poland, Kwasniewski
and Miller conceded a day after the Dec. 9 release of the Senate report that
they had agreed to let the CIA bring captured terrorism suspects to Stare
Kiejkuty. They insisted, however, that they knew nothing of any abuse.
According to UPI's reporting, "Kwasniewski is still liable
for a possible jail sentence for his complicity in the CIA site, and his denial
of its existence during a 2006 European Parliament investigation."
Though the highly cited AP headline used the phrase
"alleged torture" in its headline, human rights activists took issue
with the qualifying language.
— Jameel
Jaffer (@JameelJaffer) May 15, 2015
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share
Alike 3.0 License
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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