A Saudi Guantanamo detainee suspected by the US of plotting the 2000 attack on the USS Cole on Tuesday demanded Warsaw probe his alleged detention and torture at presumed CIA "black sites" in Poland, his lawyer said.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was detained by the US on suspicion of plotting the October 2000 attack in the Yemeni port of Aden that killed 17 sailors, "is seeking vindication for the violation of his rights in Poland," Mikolaj Pietrzak told AFP Tuesday.

Al-Nashiri claims he was "illegally imprisoned without a court order, that he was secretly jailed and smuggled across the border and above all that he was tortured in an incredibly cruel manner that violates the most basic rules of the Geneva Convention," Pietrzak said.

"We are seeking the identification and punishment of the perpetrators," he added.

According to a statement Tuesday from the Open Society Justice Initiative supporting al-Nashiri's case, "he is the first victim of the CIA's rendition programme to pursue legal remedies in Poland."

The Polish government said the case had been given over to state prosecutors.

"The current government has asked the prosecutor to shed light on this case. Therefore all the questions related to it should be addressed to the prosecutor," said Pawel Gras, a spokesman for the government which has been in power since 2007.

Polish authorities have repeatedly rejected claims by human rights organisations, in media reports and a Council of Europe investigation that Warsaw allowed the US intelligence agency to run a secret interrogation facility for captured Al-Qaeda suspects from 2003 to 2005.

Pietrzak said he had asked prosecutors to "widen the field of inquiry" in al-Nashiri's case. "We ask (prosecutors) to interview witnesses who could indicate precisely where this (CIA) camp is, and how it operates. These witnesses belong to the highest sphere of public office in Poland, but also other people in the country and abroad," he said.

In 2008 Polish prosecutors launched an investigation into the claims of a secret CIA jail fo suspected Al-Qaeda leaders, including the alleged mastermind of the 2001 terror attacks, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed.

In a report released in June 2007, Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty said the alleged prison was part of a "global spider's web" of detentions and illegal transfers spun out around the world by Washington and its allies after the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the United States.

(Source: AFP)