
European Court Says CIA Ran Secret Jail in a Polish Forest - reirob
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2014/07/24/world/24reuters-cia-jails-poland.html
======
drivingmenuts
And we'll continue to absolve any American president of war crimes, even
though it's become patently obvious that there were war crimes.

We'll hand out punishments to enlisted personnel operating under the aegis of
their superior officers, while superior officers avoid serious punishment.

We forgive and forget the lawyers who authored the decisions that allowed this
horror in the first place.

And they call us the good guys. More like "the didn't-get-found-out-by-decent-
people" guys.

I'll admit to my own days of wanting glass parking lots in war zones or
delivering godlike wrath on foreign opposition, but I don't actually have the
power to make that happen. I also generally keep it to myself, because hey,
coffee solves a lot of problems.

But nobody's even trying to prosecute our officials for their involvement in
war crimes.

~~~
rayiner
Prosecution for "war crimes" is something that only happens if you lose a war.
That's not a cynical statement; it falls out of trying to reconcile the
concept of "war crimes" with our concept of a world of sovereign nations.
Sovereign nations aren't bound by any higher sovereignty that can set rules
and subject violators to legal process. The only context in which a nation, or
its leaders, can be punished for "war crimes" is when it loses a war and is
temporarily inferior to the victors, who can impose prosecution as punishment
for conduct during the war.

~~~
jacquesm
This is simply not true. Prosecutions for war crimes have happened both for
winners and losers of wars. The truth, to be more exact, is that the losers
are overwhelmingly more prosecuted than the winners (by the winners), but the
winners now have the option to be brought before the ICC in the Hague.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court)

Of course the chances of countries being signatory to (and having ratified)
that particular treaty are roughly proportional to the inverse of their
activities regarding such crimes in the recent past.

~~~
lotsofmangos
You ever heard of the "Hague Invasion Act"?

 _" U.S. President George Bush today signed into law the American
Servicemembers Protection Act of 2002, which is intended to intimidate
countries that ratify the treaty for the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The new law authorizes the use of military force to liberate any American or
citizen of a U.S.-allied country being held by the court, which is located in
The Hague. This provision, dubbed the "Hague invasion clause," has caused a
strong reaction from U.S. allies around the world, particularly in the
Netherlands._

 _In addition, the law provides for the withdrawal of U.S. military assistance
from countries ratifying the ICC treaty, and restricts U.S. participation in
United Nations peacekeeping unless the United States obtains immunity from
prosecution._ "

[http://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-
bec...](http://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law)

~~~
ufmace
I think that sounds like a good thing.

If anybody doesn't, have you ever actually looked at the laws enforced by the
ICC and how the judges and prosecutors are appointed? And who has the
authority to change those laws? Just because you call something the
International Criminal Court doesn't mean that it isn't a ridiculous Kangaroo
court.

Without going into a detailed review, the laws all look so vague that any
participant in any kind of conflict could be changed with a huge pile of
crimes, depending on the whim of the judges and prosecutors. Most sane legal
systems require that any law be defined strictly enough that an individual can
always be sure whether an act he is planning to commit does or does not
violate the law, and I think this body of laws is far, far away from that
point.

As for the governing bodies, it seems the primary authority is a body in which
every member nation has a single representative and a single vote (the
Assembly of States Parties). Uh yeah, I bet about 10 seconds after this court
was given any real power, the dictatorships of the world would horse-trade
enough votes to change anybody who was politically unpopular with them with a
huge pile of crimes whose definition is so vague that it's impossible to know
whether you've committed them or to defend against the accusation of them.

------
gambiting
As a Polish person - I feel really bad that my country has in any way or form
participated in this and helped CIA. Our country is known to bend over to
America's requests, getting absolutely nothing back, and it upsets me deeply.

~~~
leaveyou
First, I'm not american and I don't make excuses for the US here but my
feeling is that if what Poland gave to US was secret, then it's very likely
that what Poland received from US in return is secret too. Apart from that,
what we see here is that governments aren't really bounded by laws, treaties
nor conventions(not even constitutions). The only thing that bounds a
"willing" government is another government with a bigger army or some nukes.

~~~
jacquesm
The atmosphere in Poland has been rather gung-ho pro American no matter what,
this is likely related to the proximity of America's (former?) arch enemy
Russia with whom the Poles have an extremely uneasy relationship, mostly due
to having been repeatedly run over from the East (as well as the West) in
living memory.

See the statements of Polish politicians regarding the missile shield for some
good examples of this.

~~~
CaptainZapp
What annoys a lot of central European countries (ex eastern block countries)
is the fact that their enthusiasm for the US is greeted with complete
indifference.

Czechs, Poles and others _still_ need an US visa, despite the fact that they
are fully fledged EU members and part of the Schengen treaty.

So the general attitude is no more quite as gung-ho as it was in the beginning
of the millenium.

~~~
_delirium
Fwiw, Czechs no longer do. Six ex-eastern-bloc countries were added to the
visa-waiver program in 2008: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,
Lithuania, Slovakia.

~~~
CaptainZapp
I stand corrected.

Thanks

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tptacek
This story has no more connection to HN than any other political, human
rights, or current events story. There's a whole Internet full of venues to
have discussions about these kinds of stories. They don't need to be on the HN
front page. Which is why the guidelines say they shouldn't be.

~~~
samirmenon
I thought it was interesting. I imagine that the people who voted it to the
front page thought so too.

~~~
tptacek
The bar is higher than "interesting enough to garner upvotes".

Here's what moderator 'dang said about this issue a few weeks back:

 _Some of you feel that such stories are so important that the flamewars
around them should just be allowed to burn. Our experience and observation
suggest the contrary: they are bad—existentially bad—for the site. Like fire
in general, they lead to more of the same. So the alternative to the current
policy is conflagration. The best aspects of HN, in our view, would not
survive this._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8012898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8012898)

------
contingencies
WHAT?!??! Illegal kidnapping, torture and demonstrated government complicity:
and all I got was this lousy 100,000EUR? They obviously need some decent
lawyers.

------
vj44
As a person born in Poland and living in the US, I'm proud that these two
countries cooperate to advance common goals, and I can only wish that we work
closer together (both openly or secretly).

As to what happened in those secret locations, the European Court is free to
investigate (and potentially prosecute) CIA, which is the organization
directly responsible. But then, wouldn't it make more sense to go after
Guantanamo (or eastern Ukraine these days) first?

------
tomp
I don't get it how a court can rule that a <natural fact> can be either true
or false.

~~~
jacquesm
If you don't get that then you probably don't get how _any_ court decision is
ever possible. The correct interpretation of the headline is that the court
found that the evidence documenting this particular fact is strong enough to
support the decision to collapse the true/false options to just 'true'.

Courts are messy, they deal with uncertainties all the time, so we ask them to
clarify what their view is on the veracity of certain facts and the courts
then rule based upon the evidence and their interpretation thereof and then we
proceed from that new base of certainty. Of course courts err (miscarriages of
justice) but this is a low enough incidence that we continue to believe that
when a court rules something is 'true' that it did in fact happen.

Tricky concept, courts! In the end it's still people and people make mistakes
but these people are experts trained to sift fact from fiction.

~~~
tomp
I understand how _most_ court decisions are made, e.g. those involving
legality (or morality) of some action. E.g. it's clear to me why a court could
find it legal/illegal that the CIA had a jail in Poland.

In this case, however, the court is deciding on _facts_. I guess what happened
here, as _vidarh_ 's comment implies, is that the court had some indirect
evidence presented, and based on that evidence, ruled that it is more likely
than not that the CIA had a jail in Poland (and is concealing the real,
definite evidence).

~~~
tormeh
Well, courts have to decide who killed someone. That's a fact that needs to be
decided upon.

~~~
tomp
But no one pretends that courts decide in the "fact" \- they just determine
who is "guilty" of murder. In the US, for example, you have to be certain up
to the standard of "beyond reasonable doubt", but even that standard, albeit
high, means that the court don't establish facts, but only what the fact is
most likely to be.

~~~
tormeh
How can you be guilty of murder if you did not, in fact, kill the victim?
Absolute certainty is an illusion. The word "fact" is never meant literally by
people who've thought about the subject for a while.

