The ECtHR found that Lithuania operated secret CIA prison
Moscow. May 31. INTERFAX.RU — the European court of human rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg on Thursday announced that in Lithuania in 2005-2006 operated secret prison of CIA for the detention of terrorism suspects, according to the Agency BNS.
From-for illegal detention in Lithuania, the ECHR has obliged Lithuania to pay 130 thousand euros born in Saudi Arabia, a Palestinian Abu Zubaydah (Zaynu al-Abidin Muhammad Husain). He is now in detention at Guantanamo Bay.
“The court came to the conclusion that in Lithuania since the summer of 2005 to March 2006 acted in a secret CIA prison that Mr. Z. al-Abidin Mohammed Husayn was held there and the local authorities knew that the CIA treats them as prohibited by the Convention”, — stated in the message of the court.
The court declared that Lithuania had violated the European Convention on human rights which prohibit torture, guarantee the right to freedom, privacy and the right to effective legal protection.
As the court notes, Lithuania had not conducted an effective investigation of complaints of Palestinian violations of his rights.
U.S. officials say Zubaydah was a member of al-Qaeda and is related to the September 11 attacks.
In 2015, the human rights activists asked the Prosecutor’s office of Lithuania to check on the existence of near Vilnius secret CIA prisons. The Lithuanian authorities have not confirmed the information but did not deny. Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite stated that it has “indirect suspicions” on existence of secret prison in Lithuania. The former Minister of interior of Lithuania, in its turn, during the interrogation in the Committee of national security and defense could not reject the theoretical possibility that Lithuania could have operated secret CIA prison, but they might not know about it. Thus, the previous President of Lithuania Valdas Adamkus categorically denied it.
Information about the existence of secret prisons the CIA has indirectly confirmed when the website Wikileaks released confidential information to U.S. government agencies.
The investigation on secret CIA prisons in Lithuania was discontinued in 2011, but in 2015 it resumed. It was extended due to the fact that in December 2014 the U.S. Senate released a report about the secret CIA prisons that have operated in the past decade.
In the report of the U.S. Senate specific centers of the CIA is not named, but human rights activists believe that Lithuania has been a center designated in the document as “purple”. According to the report, the centre has operated since the beginning of 2005 and was closed in 2006 due to the fact that they could not provide medical supervision.
American TV channel ABC News, 18 November 2009 announced that the representative of the Lithuanian government and former employee of the U.S. intelligence received confirmation about being in Antaviliai, the village, located 20 km from Vilnius, in the complex of the former horse-racing base secret prisons of the CIA, which contained suspected terrorists.