Lithuanian CIA torture scandal

This video is called Council of Europe digs for truth on CIA prisons.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain

Lithuania urged to reopen CIA torture probe

Thursday 29 September 2011

by Our Foreign Desk

Amnesty International challenged Lithuania today to reopen its investigation into alleged torture and CIA detention camps citing new evidence of a “rendition” flight to the country.

Amnesty counter-terrorism expert Julia Hall said that a Boeing 727 allegedly carrying Palestinian man Abu Zubaydah landed in Vilnius on February 17 2005 after taking off from Morocco and refuelling in Jordan.

“This is a previously undiscovered flight,” Ms Hall said. “It is crucial to note that this is a flight that does not appear in the parliamentary report, and we have never heard any explanation from the prosecutor general about this flight.”

Two Lithuanian probes – one by a parliamentary committee and another by the country’s prosecutors – have concluded that there was no evidence that people were held in camps controlled by the CIA in the country.

Lithuanian MPs said in a 2009 report that although the government provided two facilities to the CIA in 2002 and 2004 there was no evidence they ever held prisoners.

Prosecutors closed their own probe in January this year, citing the need to protect state secrets.

Ms Hall said: “The Lithuanian authorities should not hide behind the blanket claim of ‘state secrecy’ to prevent allegations of disappearance and torture from being properly investigated.

“They must reopen their investigation into these operations, including the activities of US officials, and hold accountable those responsible for complicity in all abuses that have taken place.”

Earlier this year the London-based Reprieve organisation provided investigators with confidential information that Mr Zubaydah, who was repeatedly tortured by US personnel, had been secretly imprisoned in Lithuania between 2004 and 2006.

“There is enough information in the public domain to make it imperative for the criminal investigation to be reopened. The Lithuanian authorities hold the key to unlocking the whole truth about their country’s role in the rendition and secret detention programmes,” Ms Hall said.

Lithuanian deputy prosecutor-general Darius Raulusaitis would not say yesterday whether the case would be reviewed.

But he said: “We are grateful to Amnesty for their job protecting human rights and would appreciate if more facts on alleged CIA prisons and detainees in Lithuania were presented.”

Reprieve calls on Lithuania to re-open torture site inquiry: here.

Guantanamo detainee takes Lithuania to European Court of Human Rights over secret CIA prison: here.

CIA: Zubaydah’s Torture Drawings, “Should They Exist,” to Remain Top Secret. Jason Leopold, Truthout: “In 2002, not long after he was subjected to so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ by Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, psychologists under contract to the CIA, high-value detainee Abu Zubaydah made about ten drawings depicting the torture he endured while in custody of the agency. One of the drawings Zubaydah had sketched captured in incredible detail the waterboarding sessions he underwent”: here.