Six final judgments of the European Court of Human Rights hold that Polish border guards turned away people who came to ask for protection, as part of a policy the Court found to exist, and that Poland went on doing it after being ordered to stop. Two further judgments concern a CIA site at Stare Kiejkuty. This page also records the United States transfers that pass through Poland, on which nothing has yet been decided.
What the record showsAs of September 10, 2026
Arrangement reported
Investigating
Transfers reported
Yes
People with protection among them
Investigating
Onward return reported
Yes
These are statements about the public record, not about the country. "Investigating" means the Coalition has not located a report or a decision on that point and is still looking. It is not a finding that the thing did not happen.
AlertRefoulement at the border and acquiescence in torturePoland
Basis: six judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, all final and none appealed successfully on the merits, and the Committee of Ministers record of what has and has not been put right since. This designation is for Poland’s own conduct at its border and for its part in the secret detention programme. It is not for the transfers through Poland from the United States, which are documented further down this page and on which no body has yet ruled.
European Court of Human Rights, M.K. and Others v. Poland, 23 July 2020
“the Polish authorities, by failing to allow the applicants to remain on Polish territory pending the examination of their applications, knowingly exposed them to a serious risk of chain refoulement and treatment prohibited by Article 3 of the Convention.” The same sentence appears again in A.I. and Others v. Poland in 2022.
The same judgment, on whether this was one official’s decision
The refusals “were not taken with proper regard to the individual situation of each of the applicants and were part of a wider policy of not receiving applications for international protection from persons presenting themselves at the Polish-Belarusian border and of returning those persons to Belarus, in violation of domestic and international law.”
The same judgment, on the Court’s own orders
Poland was told to stop and did not. People were turned back to Belarus “not only on the days on which the measures were indicated but also at least a few times thereafter”, carrying copies of the letters. “Poland has failed to discharge its obligations under Article 34 of the Convention.” The same finding was made again in D.A. and Others in 2021.
European Court of Human Rights, Al Nashiri v. Poland and Husayn v. Poland, 24 July 2014
Violation of article 3 “on account of the respondent State’s complicity in the CIA High-Value Detainees Programme in that it enabled the US authorities to subject the applicant to torture and ill-treatment on its territory and to transfer the applicant from its territory despite the existence of a real risk that he would be subjected to treatment contrary to Article 3”. The Court accepted that Polish officials did not witness the torture and did not know exactly what happened inside the facility.
Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe
Supervision of both lines remains open. On the border cases the Committee recorded in December 2025 that a statutory power to suspend the right to apply for protection, in force at the Belarus border since 27 March 2025, “is a matter of concern”. On the secret detention cases it recorded “deep regret” at the absence of measures to guarantee non-repetition.
What an Alert meansDesignated September 10, 2026Review: on the Grand Chamber judgment in R.A. and Others v. Poland, heard 12 February 2025 and undecided, and on the Committee of Ministers examination due after June 2026
Why this page is here, and a correction. An Alert was designated for Poland on 9 September 2026 on the ground of the transfers from the United States, and lifted on 10 September 2026 because every person documented as moved through Poland was a Ukrainian national moved to Ukraine, which is their own country. That lifting was right and stands. The Coalition then applied its own rule, that no state is treated differently, and looked at what Poland has been found to have done on its own account. It found six final judgments. The Alert returns on that ground, and on nothing to do with the United States. Both records are kept on this page, and they are kept apart.
What Poland has been found to have done
There are two lines of judgment against Poland, and they have nothing to do with each other. One is about a border, between 2016 and 2017 and again in 2022 and 2024, where people who came to ask for protection were sent back. The other is about a villa at Stare Kiejkuty where, in 2002 and 2003, the Central Intelligence Agency held and tortured two men. The Coalition sets them out separately because running them together as a single story about Polish conduct would misstate both.
The border: six findings, and a policy
Between 2020 and 2024 the European Court of Human Rights gave judgment against Poland in six cases arising from official border crossings: M.K. and Others, on 23 July 2020; D.A. and Others, on 8 July 2021; A.B. and Others and A.I. and Others, both in 2022; T.Z. and Others, in October 2022; and Sherov and Others, on 4 April 2024. The first five concern the crossing at Terespol on the border with Belarus. Sherov concerns Medyka, on the border with Ukraine. The applicants were Chechens, Syrians and others. All six judgments are final. Poland asked the Grand Chamber to refer M.K. and was refused.
What the applicants did was present themselves at an official crossing, in the lawful way, and say they wanted to claim asylum. In M.K. the three applicants did this thirty-five, eight and nineteen or more times. No procedure was ever opened. The Court held that “pending an application for international protection, a State cannot deny access to its territory to a person presenting himself or herself at a border checkpoint who alleges that he or she may be subjected to ill-treatment if he or she remains on the territory of the neighbouring State, unless adequate measures are taken to eliminate such a risk”, and found a violation of article 3 because Poland “knowingly exposed them to a serious risk of chain refoulement”.
It then found something further, and it is the finding that matters most for this page. The refusals were not individual mistakes. They “were part of a wider policy of not receiving applications for international protection from persons presenting themselves at the Polish-Belarusian border and of returning those persons to Belarus, in violation of domestic and international law”, and so amounted to collective expulsion, prohibited by article 4 of Protocol No. 4. The Court also found a violation of article 13, because there was no effective remedy against any of it.
Where the Court did not decide, this page says so. In both M.K. and D.A. the Court found it unnecessary to examine how the applicants were treated during the border checks themselves. There is no finding about conditions. In M.K. the Court recorded that one applicant claimed that after being returned he was captured, detained and tortured; that is his account as the Court recorded it, and the Court made no finding on it.
What Poland did after being ordered to stop
In M.K. and again in D.A. the Court found that Poland had breached article 34 of the Convention, which is the provision that protects the right of individual petition. This is rare, and the reasoning is worth reading in the Court’s own words.
The Court had indicated interim measures directing Poland not to return the applicants to Belarus. “Despite the indication of the interim measures, the applicants were turned away to Belarus not only on the days on which the measures were indicated but also at least a few times thereafter. It should be noted that on a number of those occasions the applicants were carrying with them copies of letters informing them of the indication of an interim measure in respect of their cases and that their representatives had sent copies of those letters directly to the Border Guard.”
The Court further recorded that the government “continuously questioned the possibility of complying with the interim measures”, argued that the applicants “had abused this tool in order to force the Border Guard to admit them to Poland”, and “continued to rely on those arguments even after the Court rejected them”. At the date of judgment two of the measures “still not been complied with and remain in force”. The conclusion was unanimous: “Poland has failed to discharge its obligations under Article 34 of the Convention.”
Stare Kiejkuty: what the Court found, and what it did not
On 24 July 2014 the Court gave judgment in two cases on the same day, Al Nashiri v. Poland and Husayn (Abu Zubaydah) v. Poland. Both men were held by the Central Intelligence Agency at a site at Stare Kiejkuty in 2002 and 2003. Both are still held at Guantanamo Bay.
The Court found that “it is inconceivable that the rendition aircraft could have crossed Polish airspace, landed in and departed from a Polish airport, or that the CIA occupied the premises in Stare Kiejkuty and transported detainees there, without the Polish State being informed of and involved”. It found that Poland “knew of the nature and purposes of the CIA’s activities on its territory” and had “cooperated in the preparation and execution” of them, and that Poland “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”.
The operative finding, identical in both cases, is a violation of article 3 “on account of the respondent State’s complicity in the CIA High-Value Detainees Programme in that it enabled the US authorities to subject the applicant to torture and ill-treatment on its territory and to transfer the applicant from its territory despite the existence of a real risk that he would be subjected to treatment contrary to Article 3”. The Court also found a separate violation of article 3 for the failure to investigate, and violations of articles 5, 8, 13 and 6 in each case. In Al Nashiri it found in addition a violation of articles 2 and 3 with article 1 of Protocol No. 6, because of the real risk of the death penalty.
What the Court did not find. It did not find that Poland tortured anyone. It accepted the experts’ view, and said so, that “the interrogations and, therefore, the torture inflicted on the applicant at the Stare Kiejkuty black site were the exclusive responsibility of the CIA and that it is unlikely that the Polish officials witnessed or knew exactly what happened inside the facility”. Poland’s responsibility is for acquiescence and connivance, for making it possible, and for failing afterwards to investigate. That is the ceiling of the finding and this page does not go above it.
Twelve years on, the Committee of Ministers is still supervising both judgments. In an interim resolution of December 2022 it recorded that “the consequences of the violations of the Convention for the applicants have not been remedied” and noted “with deep regret the lack of any information attesting developments in the adoption of the other measures necessary to guarantee non-repetition”. Poland has asked the United States for assurances against the death penalty, as the Court told it to. The Committee’s record of the answer, most recently in May 2023, is that the requests “could not be granted, chiefly because the European Convention on Human Rights and judgments of the Court do not reflect the obligations of the United States under international law”. Poland’s own criminal investigation was discontinued on 30 November 2020 and the discontinuance upheld on appeal in September 2021.
What has changed since, in both directions
The Committee of Ministers closed its supervision of the individual measures in D.A., A.I., A.B. and T.Z. on 14 March 2024, and in Sherov on 4 December 2025, satisfied that the awards had been paid. It said in the same resolution that this “in no way prejudges the Committee’s evaluation of the general measures in relation to the problem of non-acceptance of asylum applications and refusing entry to foreigners entering Poland from Belarus”. Supervision of the general measures in M.K. remains open, classified as a complex problem, last examined in December 2025.
On 27 March 2025 Poland repealed the provision, introduced in 2021, that let the head of the Aliens Office decline to examine an application from someone who had entered irregularly. The Committee noted that with interest, and recorded that it had been used in only five cases. On the same day a different power came into force. An Act of 21 February 2025 introduced the concept of instrumentalisation of migration, and where the government finds it, the right to apply for international protection can be suspended for up to sixty days in a defined area, renewable with the consent of the Sejm. It was imposed at the Belarus border on 27 March 2025 and, on the Committee’s record, continues. The Committee’s assessment: the mechanism “provides for further restrictions of the right to apply for international protection” and “is a matter of concern”.
A note on scope, because it is the thing most often got wrong. Every judgment above concerns official border crossings between 2016 and 2017. The pushbacks in the forest on the Belarus border from the summer of 2021 are a different set of facts and have not been ruled on. The leading case, R.A. and Others v. Poland, was relinquished to the Grand Chamber in November 2021 and heard on 12 February 2025. There is no judgment. The one 2021 application to conclude, I.A. and Others, ended on 4 December 2025 in a friendly settlement of 20,000 euros to one household, which is neither a finding against Poland nor a decision in its favour. The Coalition will not say what the Court will hold about 2021, because the Court has not held it.
What Poland says, and what it has done for others
Poland’s position, in its own words to the Committee against Torture in its eighth periodic report: “The scale of migration events on the Polish-Belarusian border intensified in July 2021. The Belarusian regime encouraged foreigners from many countries… to legally come to Belarus, allowing them to enter the country and supporting them in crossing the EU border illegally.” And: “The principle of non-refoulement is respected… Each foreign national seeking protection has the right to apply for international protection at any time, even while staying in Poland illegally.” The Coalition publishes that because a page that left it out would be worth less.
And this, which no other state on this list can show. At the end of 2025 Poland was hosting 972,287 refugees from Ukraine, on the United Nations refugee agency’s own figures, having held roughly a million every year since 2022. The state found by the Court to have turned people away at Terespol is the same state that opened its border to a million people two years later. Both facts are true, they are not in tension, and the Coalition reports both.
What has happened
Poland is not like the other states in this project, and the difference should be stated before anything else. It is a member of the European Union, a party to the European Convention on Human Rights, and the country that took in more people fleeing Ukraine than any other. Nobody removed from the United States is documented as having stayed in Poland. Every transfer the Coalition can verify is transit. Aircraft land at Rzeszów-Jasionka, people are driven to the crossing at Medyka, and they go over the border into Ukraine.
So the question this page asks is narrower than the one asked of Ghana or Eswatini. It is not what Poland does to people who arrive. It is whether Poland is being used as a corridor to return Ukrainian nationals across a border into a country at war, and what a person moved that way has available to them.
Arrangement. None established, and denied. Investigating.
Transferred. Fifty people in November 2025, of whom forty-five are identified as Ukrainian men and five as women. Two flights on 17 March 2026. A further flight on 30 April 2026, the number aboard unknown.
Held in Poland. No source places any of them in a Polish guarded centre, or anywhere in Poland beyond the drive to the border.
Onward. Across the Poland-Ukraine border, in restraints removed only after the crossing.
The denial, in the government’s own words.
The Coalition puts this high on the page rather than at the foot of it. On 13 May 2026 a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior and Administration told Reuters that Poland has no agreement or arrangement with the United States regarding deportations, and that this is an internal matter between two countries, Ukraine and the United States. She said Poland was a transit stop with no direct part in the removals, that the Border Guard carried out flight clearance procedures only, and that a Ukrainian citizen to be deported from the United States to Ukraine may not have a right to enter Poland, so a simple check is made within the Border Guard’s statutory competence.
Amnesty International and Human Rights First wrote to the Foreign Minister and the Interior Minister on 17 April 2026 and had no reply in the twenty-six days before they published. No statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or by the Border Guard in its own name has been found.
Ministry of the Interior and Administration, to Reuters, 13 May 2026. Amnesty International and Human Rights First, 13 May 2026. Both linked below.
What the monitoring record actually says, which is less than it is often taken to say.
Poland appears once in Third Country Deportation Watch, in a list of states said to have arrangements for temporary transfer before onward return to the home country. That is a categorisation by the people keeping the list. It is not a document, and the sentence does not say agreement. The tracker maintained by the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants does not list Poland at all. The Coalition sets the two records side by side and does not resolve them.
There is also a date the Coalition cannot settle. CNN and NPR give 17 November 2025 for the first flight; Amnesty International gives 18 November. Both stand here.
What is on the other side of the crossing
This section is the reason the page exists, and it is written narrowly, from sources, because it is the part most easily overstated.
Ukraine has had a general mobilisation in force since February 2022. Men between eighteen and sixty are subject to registration requirements, and mobilisation applies within a band inside that range. Men of mobilisation age are in general prohibited from leaving the country. The practical consequence for someone driven to Medyka and walked across is that the border is one-way.
What is documented about the November 2025 group is that Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service told CNN that twenty-four of the forty-five men were wanted in connection with the draft and were handed to the police on arrival. The Coalition states that and stops there. It does not assert what happened to them afterwards, because no source it has been able to check says.
Danish Immigration Service, country of origin report on return and mobilisation in Ukraine, March 2026. CNN, 27 March 2026. Both linked below. The Coalition describes the rules as the sources state them and does not advise any person about their position under them.
What the record says about Poland itself
The two State Department editions disagree, and the newer one is the thinner one.
On torture and cruel treatment, the 2023 edition records that there were isolated reports that government officials employed such practices. The 2024 edition records that there were no credible reports that they did. That is a change in the finding, not a change in wording, and the Coalition records it rather than choosing the edition that suits it.
The 2024 edition also runs to roughly a quarter of the length of the 2023 edition, and what it lost is what this page would otherwise use. The 2023 subsection on refoulement is gone. So is every reference to guarded centres and to foreigners in detention, and so is the passage recording the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights’ concern about cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of people taken into police custody. The 2024 report contains no instance of the words refoulement, guarded, or foreigner. Pushbacks at the Belarus border are retained in both.
Where this page needs the detail, it cites the 2023 edition and says so. The Coalition’s label for Poland remains that no finding of official torture is cited, because that is what the record supports.
United States Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Poland, 2023 and 2024 editions, both linked below.
Detention of foreigners, if it ever applies here.
No source places anyone transferred from the United States in a Polish guarded centre. The Coalition sets the position out anyway, because a person who is stopped rather than waved through is in a different situation from the one described above. Detention of an asylum applicant may run to six months; pre-removal detention may run to eighteen months in total. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture visited Poland in 2022 and reported in February 2024 on centres including Biała Podlaska, Białystok and Wędrzyn. The Polish government’s reply to that report could not be retrieved when this page was compiled, and is noted below as missing rather than summarised from second hand.
Asylum Information Database, Poland, duration of detention, updated 30 July 2026, citing article 89(4) and (5) of the Law on Protection and article 404(5) of the Law on Foreigners. European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, report on Poland, CPT/Inf(2024)10.
What is open, and the difficulty that runs through all of it
Poland has more machinery than any other state in this project. The difficulty is that most of it needs a Polish proceeding to attach to, and a person driven from an aircraft to a border crossing never enters one.
The European Court of Human Rights. Open, and the interim measure under Rule 39 is the only mechanism named anywhere on this site that can stop a removal within hours. The Court’s own practice direction sets the terms. Measures are indicated only where there is prima facie evidence of an imminent risk of irreparable harm, and not where the person would merely endure hardship. The Court will not act while a domestic remedy with suspensive effect remains open. A request should be sent as soon as possible after the final domestic decision, and the Court warns that it may not be able to deal with a request in a removal case received less than a working day before the removal is due. It will not deal with requests sent by email.
The Committee against Torture. Open. Poland made the declaration under articles 21 and 22 on 12 May 1993, recognising the competence of the Committee to consider communications from individuals. Slow, and with no suspensive effect of its own.
The national preventive mechanism. Poland ratified the Optional Protocol on 14 September 2005. The mechanism sits inside the Commissioner for Human Rights. It inspects places of detention systematically. It does not decide individual complaints and it cannot stop a removal. It is where evidence about conditions comes from, not where relief comes from.
The Court of Justice of the European Union. No direct route for an individual. A Polish court hearing the case may refer a question to it. That requires a live Polish proceeding, which is the thing a person moved through in transit does not have.
A complaint to the European Commission. Anyone may report a member state for breaching European Union law. The Commission states that it will not offer individual redress or compensation, and will not review decisions taken in individual cases. It is a lever on a system, not a remedy for a person.
European Court of Human Rights, practice direction on requests for interim measures. United Nations Treaty Collection, chapters IV-9 and IV-9-b. European Commission, on reporting a breach of European Union law. All linked below.
The first days
The window in Poland is short, and in the cases documented so far it has been a matter of hours. Anything that is going to be done has to be started before the vehicle reaches the crossing.
What exists, in the order in which it usually matters
Establish where the person actually is, and write down the time
Rzeszów-Jasionka is the airport in every documented operation, and Medyka the crossing. A person in transit is not registered in a Polish procedure, so there is no file to ask about. The time the aircraft landed, and the time anyone last had contact, may be the only fixed points that exist.
Call the Association for Legal Intervention or the Helsinki Foundation, on their case lines
Both publish separate addresses for individual matters rather than a general enquiry box. They are the organisations in Poland that act for foreigners, and they are the ones who can tell you within the hour whether anything can be filed.
Tell the Commissioner for Human Rights, and use the freephone line
The Commissioner takes individual complaints and houses the national preventive mechanism. The office issues opinions and interventions rather than binding orders, and an intervention that arrives while a person is still on Polish soil is worth more than a finding later.
If a Rule 39 request is to be made, it goes through the Court’s own channel
Not by email. The Court says so in terms. And it says it may not be able to deal with a request in a removal case received less than a working day before the removal is due, which in a transit operation is most of them.
Ask, in writing, what legal basis was used
The Border Guard says it performs a flight clearance and a simple entry check within its statutory competence. Asking which provision was applied, and to whom, is a question a Polish lawyer can put through the access to public information law, and the answer is the thing this page most lacks.
Who is reachable in Poland
Official complaint bodies
National human rights institution, and home of the national preventive mechanism
Commissioner for Human Rights
Rzecznik Praw Obywatelskich. Takes individual complaints and houses the mechanism established under the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, which inspects places of detention. It issues opinions and interventions; it does not make binding orders. The freephone line runs Monday 10:00 to 18:00 and Tuesday to Friday 8:00 to 16:00. Complaints may also be filed through the form at formularze.brpo.gov.pl.
Legal help for foreigners, including people in detention
Association for Legal Intervention
Stowarzyszenie Interwencji Prawnej. The office number is answered Monday to Friday 10:00 to 14:00, and a separate appointment line runs 15:00 to 16:00 on +48 880 145 372. Individual cases go to porada@interwencjaprawna.pl rather than to the general office address.
Strategic litigation, and legal help in migration and refugee matters
Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights
The Foundation is the organisation whose concern about treatment in police custody is recorded in the 2023 United States report. Migration and refugee matters go to refugees@hfhr.pl rather than to the general address. The telephone is answered Monday to Friday 10:00 to 14:00.
A toll-free line answered Monday to Friday 8:30 to 16:30, with an information site at help.unhcr.org/poland. The Coalition could not confirm a street address or a public email address for the Warsaw office on the agency’s own help site, and has published neither rather than guess.
This section is addressed to the Polish officials who clear these flights and staff that crossing, and it is not written as a warning. The Ministry’s position is that this is an internal matter between two other countries and that Poland performs a flight clearance and an entry check. Taken at its word, that description contains the whole of the difficulty, because a check of whether a person may enter Poland is not a check of what happens to them when they do not.
Poland accepted the individual complaint procedure under the Convention against Torture in 1993, and ratified the Optional Protocol in 2005, at a time when very few states in this record had done either. Those commitments were not made for the ordinary case. The question they were made for is the one that arrives on an aircraft with a list of names, where the person clearing it is the last official in a European Union member state who will see the people concerned before they cross into a country at war. A note on the file recording what was asked, and of whom, costs nothing now and is the only thing that will exist later.
The dated record
Every entry below is a fact with a source.
12 May 1993
Poland makes the declaration under articles 21 and 22 of the Convention against Torture, recognising the competence of the Committee to consider communications from individuals.
14 Sep 2005
Poland ratifies the Optional Protocol. The national preventive mechanism is placed inside the Commissioner for Human Rights.
22 Feb 2024
The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture publishes its report on the 2022 visit, covering guarded centres for foreigners.
18 Aug 2025
Immigration and Customs Enforcement announces the removal of an undisclosed number of Ukrainian nationals. The post is later deleted.
17 or 18 Nov 2025
Fifty people are flown to Poland, forty-five of them Ukrainian men and five women, and taken to the crossing at Shehyni and Medyka. They are handcuffed until after crossing. Ukraine’s border service says twenty-four of the forty-five men were wanted in connection with the draft and were handed to police. CNN and NPR give 17 November; Amnesty International gives 18 November. Both dates stand.
17 Mar 2026
Two further flights land at Rzeszów-Jasionka carrying Ukrainian nationals. Their whereabouts are recorded as unknown.
17 Apr 2026
Amnesty International and Human Rights First write to the Foreign Minister and the Interior Minister. No reply is recorded before publication.
30 Apr 2026
A further flight at Rzeszów-Jasionka, forty-four days after the March operations. The number aboard is not known.
13 May 2026
The Ministry of the Interior and Administration tells Reuters that Poland has no agreement or arrangement with the United States regarding deportations, and that its role is transit and flight clearance.
What is not established
That any agreement or arrangement exists between Poland and the United States. The government denies it, and no instrument has been produced by anyone. That anyone transferred from the United States was held in a Polish guarded centre; the evidence points the other way. The nationality of the five women on the first flight. The number of people aboard the March and April 2026 flights, and where those people are now. Whether Polish officials knew that anyone aboard had a pending protection claim in the United States. Which date is correct for the first flight.
And this, which the Coalition states as plainly as the rest: no court, treaty body or European Union institution has made any finding about the transfers through Poland from the United States. Nothing in the section above should be read as though one had. The six judgments set out at the head of this page concern the border and the secret detention site. They say nothing about these flights, and the Coalition does not borrow their authority for them.
That the Committee against Torture has found Poland in breach of article 3. It has not. Its most recent concluding observations on Poland are dated 29 August 2019, they predate the events of 2021, and they express concern and make recommendations, which are different acts from a finding. Poland filed its eighth periodic report in August 2023 and the Committee has not yet examined it.
That the European Court has ruled on the pushbacks in the forest from 2021. It has not, and the leading case is undecided.
That Poland has withdrawn its reservation to article 20 of the Convention against Torture, the inquiry procedure. The depositary record shows only the withdrawal of the article 30 reservation, on 19 December 2025.
The Coalition writes Investigating rather than none found, because the second phrase reads as though a question has been answered when it has only been asked.
What this page does not yet carry
The Polish government’s response to the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, CPT/Inf(2024)11, which could not be downloaded when this page was compiled. It is cited by reference and not summarised from second hand.
Any statement by the Border Guard or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in its own name. The only official position on the record comes from one ministry spokesperson to one news agency.
An answer to the question of which statutory provision the Border Guard applies to a person who lands on an aircraft and leaves by road. A request under the Polish access to public information law would produce it, and the Coalition has not yet made one.
If you can correct anything here, the Coalition wants to hear it.
Sources
Every source used on this page, linked so it can be read in full rather than through the summaries above.
Judgments against Poland. European Court of Human Rights: M.K. and Others v. Poland, nos. 40503/17, 42902/17 and 43643/17, 23 July 2020, final 14 December 2020, paragraphs 179, 183 to 187, 207, 210 to 211 and 235 to 238. D.A. and Others v. Poland, no. 51246/17, 8 July 2021, final 22 November 2021, paragraphs 69 and 98 to 101. A.I. and Others v. Poland, no. 39028/17, 30 June 2022, final 14 November 2022, paragraph 45. A.B. and Others v. Poland, no. 42907/17, 30 June 2022. T.Z. and Others v. Poland, no. 41764/17, 13 October 2022. Sherov and Others v. Poland, no. 54029/17 and others, 4 April 2024. Al Nashiri v. Poland, no. 28761/11, and Husayn (Abu Zubaydah) v. Poland, no. 7511/13, both 24 July 2014, final 16 February 2015, paragraphs 441, 442, 452, 454, 517 and 518 and the operative provisions. I.A. and Others v. Poland, nos. 53181/21 and 53566/21, friendly settlement, 4 December 2025.
Execution of those judgments. Committee of Ministers: Interim Resolution CM/ResDH(2022)353, 8 December 2022, on Al Nashiri and Husayn. Resolution CM/ResDH(2024)47, 14 March 2024, closing D.A., A.I., A.B. and T.Z. Resolution CM/ResDH(2025)391, 4 December 2025, closing Sherov. The execution records for the M.K. group and the Al Nashiri group in the Council of Europe’s HUDOC-EXEC database, as they stood on 10 September 2026.
Poland’s own submissions and treaty position. Eighth periodic report of Poland to the Committee against Torture, CAT/C/POL/8, 14 November 2023, paragraphs 62 and 63. Concluding observations on the seventh periodic report, CAT/C/POL/CO/7, 29 August 2019, paragraphs 25 and 26. United Nations Treaty Collection, chapters IV-9 and IV-9-b. Committee against Torture, general comment No. 4 (2017), CAT/C/GC/4, paragraphs 11 and 12. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Refugee Data Finder, refugees from Ukraine in Poland, year-end 2022 to 2025.
Compiled 9 September 2026, and substantially added to on 10 September 2026 when the Coalition examined Poland’s own conduct rather than only its part in the transfers. Where this page summarises a report, the full document is linked above and should be read rather than relied on through the summary.
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