Al Nashiri v. Poland

The Court found it “established beyond reasonable doubt” that the applicant arrived at Szymany on 5 December 2002 on the CIA rendition aircraft N63MU, was held from then until 6 June 2003 at the CIA detention facility at Stare Kiejkuty with the codename “Quartz”, was interrogated by the CIA and subjected to its enhanced interrogation techniques and to unauthorised techniques, and was flown out on the rendition aircraft N379P (paragraph 417). The treatment “amounted to torture within the meaning of Article 3 of the Convention” (paragraph 516).

Poland “knew of the nature and purposes of the CIA’s activities on its territory at the material time” and cooperated in them, and it “ought to have known that, by enabling the CIA to detain such persons on its territory, it was exposing them to a serious risk of treatment contrary to the Convention” (paragraph 442). The Court accepted the experts’ assessment that the torture was “the exclusive responsibility of the CIA” and that Polish officials were unlikely to have witnessed it, but held Poland responsible on account of its “acquiescence and connivance” in the programme (paragraph 517).

On the transfer, it held that “by enabling the CIA to transfer the applicant to its other secret detention facilities, the Polish authorities exposed him to a foreseeable serious risk of further ill-treatment and conditions of detention in breach of Article 3 of the Convention” (paragraph 518), and that “at the time of the applicant’s transfer from Poland there was a substantial and foreseeable risk that he could be subjected to the death penalty following his trial before the military commission” (paragraph 578).

Under Article 46 it required Poland “to seek to remove that risk as soon as possible, by seeking assurances from the US authorities that he will not be subjected to the death penalty” (paragraph 589).