Poland to pay for CIA's alleged "torture"

WARSAW, Poland -- Poland will pay 230,000 euros ($262,000) in compensation to two terror suspects who say they were held at a CIA secret prison that Poland agreed to host from 2002-2003, a government minister said Wednesday.

Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna made the statement after the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, rejected Poland's appeal of its earlier ruling.

"We will abide by this ruling because we are a law-abiding country," Schetyna told Polish Radio 3. "It is a question of the coming weeks, a month."

But he questioned how the money would be used and whether it needed to be paid directly to the suspects, who are imprisoned in Guantanamo.

The European court ruled in July that Poland violated the rights of terror suspects Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah by allowing the CIA to imprison them and by failing to stop the "torture and inhuman or degrading treatment" of the inmates. The two men sued Poland and the court ordered Poland to pay compensation. Poland appealed the ruling, saying it could influence its own investigation of the case.

That ruling was the first that any court has passed on the so-called "renditions program" that U.S. President George W. Bush launched after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Since 2008, Polish prosecutors have been investigating whether Poland hosted a secret CIA prison, in violation of its laws. Two former leaders only recently admitted they had allowed the secret CIA prison to operate in Poland, but said they never authorized harsh treatment of inmates.

The European court's ruling is expected to speed up Poland's investigation, which is mostly classified.