European Court of Human Rights

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 155

August-September 2012

Al Nashiri v. Poland  - 28761/11

 

Article 3

Torture

Alleged complicity in practice of rendition of persons to secret detention sites at which illegal interrogation methods were employed: communicated

 

Effective investigation

Alleged failure to acknowledge and investigate details of ill-treatment and enforced disappearance: communicated

 

[This summary also covers the communicated case of Al Nashiri v. Romania, no. 33234/12.]

The applicant, a Saudi Arabian national of Yemeni descent who is currently detained in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba due to suspicion of his involvement in certain terrorist activities, claims several violations of the Convention in relation to the alleged complicity of the respondent States in the practice within their territory by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of “extraordinary rendition”.*

In his application to the Court he complains that these States, who he alleges knew and should have known about the rendition programme, the secret detention sites within their territory in which he was held, and the torture and inhuman and degrading treatment to which he and others were subjected to as part of the process, knowingly and intentionally enabled the CIA to detain him, and have refused to date to properly acknowledge or investigate any wrongdoing. He also alleges that the respondent States enabled the CIA to transfer him from their territory despite substantial grounds for believing that there was a real risk that he would be subjected to the death penalty and further ill-treatment and incommunicado detention, and that he would receive a flagrantly unfair trial.

In support of his complaints, the applicant notes that the process of extraordinary rendition has been condemned in the strongest terms by numerous international organisations - including the European Parliament, and that the circumstances surrounding these events have been the subject of various reports and investigations, including the “Marty Reports” commissioned by the Council of Europe, which detail an intricate network of CIA detention and transfer in certain Council of Europe States.

Communicated under Articles 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10 and 13 of the Convention, and under Protocol No. 6 to the Convention.

* The apprehension and extrajudicial transfer of a person to a secret detention site for the purpose of interrogation, during which illegal methods are often employed.

 

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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