Polish prosecutors probe possible CIA jail

By Gabriela Baczynska

WARSAW (Reuters) - The Polish prosecutor's office is investigating claims there was a CIA prison in Poland for al Qaeda suspects where guards might have used methods close to torture, the prime minister's top adviser said on Friday.

Polish media reported earlier on Friday that a classified note written by the Polish secret service had proved the existence of a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency base in Poland.

"I am not familiar with such a note and I don't think Prime Minister Donald Tusk is either," Slawomir Nowak, who heads Tusk's political office, said in an interview with Tok FM radio.

"But the premier asked the justice minister to clarify this matter and the country's prosecutor's office is investigating the potential existence of the CIA prison."

The Washington Post reported for the first time in 2005, quoting unnamed CIA sources, that CIA prisons existed in Europe. A U.S. human rights group, Human Rights Watch, later said Poland and Romania hosted the prisons.

"There definitely was cooperation between Polish and American secret services," a source close to the secret service told Reuters. "But whether there was torture at the base, hopefully we will learn about that soon."

Foreign and local media speculated that the base was operational between 2002 and 2005, while Aleksander Kwasniewski was president and Poland was run by the leftist governments of Leszek Miller and Marek Belka and then a rightist administration under Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz.

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