MOSCOW, July 24 (RAPSI) – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled Thursday that Poland is responsible for numerous violations of rights of two men suspected of terrorist acts and detained through a CIA-run secret prison program.

The application was filed by two Guantanamo detainees Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, and  assert a series of violations of the European Charter of Human Rights (Charter) at the hands of Poland., which allegedly hosted an off the books facility for processing CIA-marked detainees.

The Polish prosecutor’s office started an official investigation into an alleged CIA secret prison scheme in 2008. It found that a secret prison was established in 2003 in Stare Kiejkuty, a village in a remote region in northeast Poland, and that it was used to interrogate terrorism suspects.

The court also ruled that Poland had violated the following articles of the European Convention on Human Rights : Article 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment), Article 5 (right to liberty and security), Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life), Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) and Article 6  (right to a fair trial).

The Polish government argued that it made the decision to cooperate with the CIA in 2002 due to the threat of terrorism following the terrorist attacks in New York, and that there were no legitimate reasons to prosecute Polish officials.

It is alleged that the prisoners in the CIA-run secret network of European prisons were subjected to harsh questioning, mock executions, waterboarding and other torture, including the threats that their families would be arrested and sexually abused.

Similar cases have been lodged with the Strasbourg court against Romania and Lithuania.