The C.I.A. Prison in Poland. Fault, Responsibility and the Europeanization of Justice

The phrase “war on terror” may have been banished from official U.S. foreign policy, yet actions perpetrated under its banner still reverberate in Europe and America. The complicity of Polish authorities (and some other European governments) in extraordinary renditions and torture of terror suspects was first reported in 2005. Following allegations that a C.I.A. prison operated in Poland after 9/11, the claims were investigated by the Council of Europe. A national criminal investigation was launched in 2008, yet it was only in 2012 that a former government official was charged with violating international law in connection with the case. The announcement of the charges triggered a media debate on “Polish responsibility for torture,” but the findings of the national investigation remain classified on security grounds.

This paper offers a sociolegal interpretation of national and European responses to the Polish C.I.A. prison case. Both the Polish prosecution and the CoE rapporteur helped frame the local debate on torture. More importantly however, I suggest that the dual, national and European tracks of investigation created a cognitive dissonance among the Polish public. As a result, the fact that torture took place in Poland is simultaneously beyond doubt and utterly deniable. Owing to the CoE special rapporteur mechanism, responsibility for torture has been provisionally allocated but it remains juridically unenforceable. I refer to this phenomenon as ‘responsibility without fault’ and I argue that it demands urgent attention as European institutions contend with the human rights implications of future security missions.