WARSAW, Feb 9, (Agencies): The Polish city of Gdansk said it was offended by Hollywood blockbuster “Zero Dark Thirty” for labelling the home town of the communist bloc’s first independent labour union as the location of a secret CIA detention centre. The critically acclaimed movie has already sparked controversy by suggesting that the torture of al Qaeda suspects played an important role in tracking down al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US special forces during a raid on a Pakistan compound in 2011.
 

Polish prosecutors are looking into the country’s role in helping US intelligence services transport suspected members of the al Qaeda group who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001 suicide airliner attacks on New York and Washington to facilities outside the United States for interrogation.
The remote airfield in northern Poland where human rights groups accuse the CIA of flying al Qaeda suspects is located some 200 km (124 miles) from Gdansk, where electrician Lech Walesa co-founded the Solidarity trade union movement which toppled the communist government more than two decades ago.

The film offers a view from the sea of an industrial building, a red ship with a darkening sky in the background and the caption: “CIA BLACK SITE, Gdansk, Poland”. “The name ‘Gdansk’ is synonymous with freedom and Solidarity,” Gdansk Mayor Pawel Adamowicz said. “In the movie it has been turned to a gloomy place where secret services interrogate people accused of terrorism. We are simply offended,” he told Reuters. Poland’s government has never publicly acknowledged the existence of CIA prison centres on its territory. The investigation into the country’s involvement in the CIA’s “rendition” programme is now in its fifth year and prosecutors asked earlier this week for another extension.

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LOS ANGELES: The screenwriter of “Lincoln,” which has 12 Oscar nominations, conceded on Friday that the taut political drama changed the historical record for “15 seconds,” after a lawmaker complained.
Democratic Representative Joe Courtney of Connecticut said a key scene the film was wrong to suggest that two congressmen from his state voted against the US Constitution’s 13th Amendment that abolished slavery in 1865. “Representative Courtney is correct that the four members of the Connecticut delegation voted for the amendment,” screenwriter Tony Kushner wrote in a letter he made public. “We changed two of the delegation’s votes, and we made up new names for the men casting those votes, so as not to ascribe any actions to actual persons who didn’t perform them.” With a hint of irony, Kushner added: “I’m sorry if anyone in Connecticut felt insulted by these 15 seconds of the movie, although issuing a congressional press release startlingly headlined ‘Before The Oscars...’ seems a rather flamboyant way to make that known.” Kushner stressed that the fallacy did not change the direction of the film in any way, stressing that “Lincoln” is first and foremost “a dramatic film and not an attack on their home state.” In a statement released after Kushner’s letter, Courtney said he was pleased the screenwriter had recognized the mistake. “My effort from the beginning has been to set the record straight on this vote, so people do not leave the theater believing Connecticut’s representatives in the 38th Congress were on the wrong side of history,” Courtney said. He also called for a correction ahead of the DVD release. The Steven Spielberg film recounts Abraham Lincoln’s maneuvers to secure votes in Congress to abolish slavery during the American Civil War.