FIRST SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 15925/16 Mustafa Ahmad AL-HAWSAWI against Poland

The European Court of Human Rights (First Section), sitting on 16 October 2018 as a Committee composed of:

Aleš Pejchal , President, Tim Eicke , Gilberto Felici , judges, and Renata Degener, Section Registrar ,

Having regard to the above application lodged on 22 March 2016,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

FACTS AND PROCEDURE

1. The applicant, Mr Mustafa Ahmad A l-Hawsawi, is a Saudi Arabian national, who was born in 1968 and is currently detained in the Internment Facility at the US Guantánamo Naval Base in Cuba. He was represented before the Court by Mrs C. Ferstman , a lawyer from Redress, a non-governmental organisation with its seat in London, the United Kingdom.

2. In March 2003 the applicant was captured by the Pakistani forces in Rawalpindi, Pakistan and transferred to the custody of Central Intelligence Agency of the United States (“the CIA”). From that time until 5 September 2006 he was secretly detained in various secret detention facilities run under the CIA extraordinary rendition and detention programme, the so-called “High ‑ Value Detainee Programme” (“the HVD Programme”; for further details see, for instance, Al Nashiri v. Poland , no. 28761/11, §§ 47-71, 24 July 2014 and Abu Zubaydah v. Lithuania , no. 46454/11 , §§ 20-60, 31 May 2018).

3. In his application the applicant alleged that he had been rendered by the CIA to Poland on one of three ren dition flights from Kabul, Afghanistan that had landed in Szymany military airfield between April and 30 July 2003 and that until 22 September 2003 he had been detained and tortured in a secret detention facility run by the CIA in Poland, referred to as “Detention Site Blue” in the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence ’ s Executive Summary of the “Study of the Central Intelligence Agency ’ s Detention and Interrogation Program”, released on 9 December 2014 (“the 2014 US Senate Committee Report”).

He submitted that Poland was in breach of various provisions of the Convention, in particular:

( i ) Articles 3, 5 and 8 in that Poland had enabled the CIA to detain him on its territory at a secret detention facility and allowed the CIA to subject him to treatment that had amounted to torture, incommunicado detention and deprivation of any access to, or contact with, his family;

(ii) Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention, Article 1 of Protocol No. 6 to the Convention and also Articles 5 and 6 of the Convention in that Poland had enabled the CIA to transfer him from its territory to other CIA-run detention facilities elsewhere, despite a real risk of his being subjected to further torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, a flagrantly unfair trial and the imposition of the death penalty;

(iii) Article 3 alone and in conjunction with Article 13 and also Articles 5 and 8 of the Convention in that Poland had failed to conduct an effective and thorough investigation into his allegations of serious violations of his rights protected by the Convention during his secret detention on Polish territory.

4. A description of material disclosed in the 2014 US Senate Committee Report and findings and conclusions made in that report can be found in the Court ’ s judgments in Al Nashiri v. Romania and Abu Zubaydah v. Lithuania (see Al Nashiri v. Romania , no. 33234/12 , §§ 22-26 and 82-97, 31 May 2018; and Abu Zubaydah v. Lithuania (cited above), §§ 22-25 and 74-89).

The report refers to eight colour code-named secret CIA detention facilities. In the above judgments, the locations of the facilities were identified as follows: Detention Site Green was located in Thailand, Detention Site Blue in Poland, Detention Site Black in Romania, Detention Site Violet in Lithuania and the four remaining sites – “Cobalt”, “Brown”, “ Gray ” and “Orange” – were located in Afghanistan (see Al Nashiri v. Romania , cited above, § 159; and Abu Zubaydah v. Lithuania (cited above), § 166).

5. On 9 December 2016 the applicant ’ s representative informed the Court that the applicant wished to withdraw his application. It was submitted that in June 2016 the US authorities had declassified CIA documents which included new facts and details, providing additional insight into the operation of the HVD Programme and the applicant ’ s detention. The CIA had released over fifty documents. This fresh evidence demonstrated that between March and November 2003 he had been detained in Afghanistan, in the CIA ’ s detention facility referred to as “Detention Site Cobalt” in the 2014 US Senate Committee Report.

THE LAW

6. In the light of the foregoing, and in the absence of any special circumstances regarding respect for the rights guaranteed by the Convention or its Protocols, the Court, in accordance with Article 37 § 1 (a) of the Convention, considers that it is no longer justified to continue the examination of the application.

In view of the above, it is appropriate to strike the case out of the list.

For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,

Decides to strike the application out of its list of cases.

Done in English and notified in writing on 22 October 2018 .

Renata Degener Aleš Pejchal Deputy Registrar President