Poland is paying a quarter of a million dollars to two terror suspects allegedly tortured by the CIA in a secret facility in this country prompting outrage among many here who feel they are being punished for American wrongdoing.
Europe's top human rights court imposed the penalty against Poland, setting a Saturday deadline.
It irks many in Poland that their country is facing legal repercussions for the secret rendition and detention program which the CIA operated under then-President George W. Bush in several countries across the world after the 9/11 attacks.
So far no US officials have been held accountable, but the European Court of Human Rights has shown that it doesn't want to let European powers that helped the program off the hook.
The court also ordered Macedonia in 2012 to pay 60,000 euros (USD 68,000) to a Lebanese-German man who was seized in Macedonia on erroneous suspicion of terrorist ties and subjected to abuse by the CIA.
The Polish Foreign Ministry said today that it was processing the payments. However, neither Polish officials nor the US Embassy in Warsaw would say where the money is going or how it was being used.
For now, it remains unclear how a European government can make payments to two men who have been held for years at Guantanamo with almost no contact to the outside world. Even lawyers for the suspects were tight-lipped, though they said the money would not be used to fund terrorism.
Witold Waszczykowski, an opposition lawmaker, says he considers the punishment unfair because the suspects were in the sole custody of American officials during their entire stay in Poland in 2002 and 2003 - and never under Polish authority.
"I think we shouldn't pay, we shouldn't respect this judgment," Waszczykowski said. "This is a case not between us and them it's between them and the United States government."
The European Court of Human Rights ruled last July that Poland violated the rights of suspects Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri by allowing the CIA to imprison them and by failing to stop the "torture and inhuman or degrading treatment" of the inmates.
