Brussels, 23/02/2010 (Agence Europe) - A Polish NGO said on Monday 22 February that it had official confirmation that US planes likely to have been secretly carrying CIA prisoners suspected of terrorism had landed in Poland in 2003. The Polish branch of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights said in a press release that official flight records obtained by NGOs confirmed that at least six CIA aircraft, carrying prisoners suspected by the US authorities of terrorism, had landed in Poland. Records from the Polish governmental air traffic control agency, published by the Foundation, confirm that planes chartered in the United States and carrying passengers stopped over at the Szymany air base in the north of Poland. In an article that appeared in June 2008, the New York Times witnesses who claimed that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, suspected of having organised the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, had been interrogated and tortured near the Szymany base. A report published by Swiss senator and Council of Europe special rapporteur Dick Marty in June 2007 said that there was enough information to state that secret CIA detention centres had been located in Europe between 2003 and 2005, especially in Poland and Romania. Polish authorities have hitherto firmly rejected these various claims. The matter has been under investigation by Polish public prosecutors since August 2008. “It is time for the authorities to provide a full accounting of Poland's role in rendition,” said Adam Bodnar of the Helsinki Foundation in Warsaw. (B.C./transl.rt)