CIA prison in Lithuania where inmates were tortured to be sold
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The steel barn and "black site" served as a CIA detention center after 9/11.
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The secret CIA prison near Vilnius, Lithuania
A former "black site" in Lithuania known as "Project No. 2" and "Detention Site Violet" that served as a CIA detention center is being sold.
The steel barn near Vilnius, Lithuania's capital, contains long passageways that lead to soundproof rooms where "one could do whatever one wanted," according to Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas, who was head of a parliamentary investigation into the facility in 2010.
The institution was part of a US shadowy rendition program after the events of September 11, 2001, in which the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) held suspects in prisons outside of US jurisdiction, allowing their interrogation without charges and subjecting them to severe interrogation methods and torture.
Suspects in the prison were shaved on arrival, blindfolded, hooded, and shackled. They were also subjected to sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, waterboarding, and continuous light and noises.
The Lithuanian Parliament’s investigation into the barn concluded that it had been used by the CIA, but that there was no proof the facility had held prisoners, maintaining that it was not possible to determine what exactly was going on there.
Amrit Singh, a human rights lawyer who has battled lawsuits on European states' responsibilities in hosting CIA detention camps, said the European Court order compelled the Lithuanian government to undertake an "effective investigation", but it had failed to do so.
She added that the sale of the site without acknowledgment of the truth or meaningful investigation is "testament to the fact that impunity has reigned supreme with respect to the CIA’s torture program and the European governments’ complicity,”
Anusauskas did not respond to a request for comment.
The locations of the various detention centers are still classified in the US and a Senate report issued in 2014 that revealed devastating facts about the program referred to the sites solely by code names.
The European Court of Human Rights has verified that the 10-room barn in a Lithuanian woodland was the Violet jail mentioned in the Senate report – and that Lithuanian officials were aware of and collaborated with the CIA's operations.
Brutal torture methods
Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that the court convicted Lithuania of violating its responsibilities under the European Convention on Human Rights and ordered the country to pay Abu Zubayda, dubbed "the forever prisoner", more than $113,000 in damages for his torture at the prison.
From February 2005 until March 2006, Zubaydah said he was imprisoned and tortured in Lithuania. He was apprehended in Pakistan in 2002 and suspected of being a top Al-Qaeda member. It was eventually revealed that he was not a member and has been jailed without charge in the US since.
According to a 2014 Senate study, the harsh interrogation methods used at CIA "black sites" were "brutal" and ineffective.
The Lithuania facility was one of the latest to close. After a hospital refused to accommodate CIA inmate Mustafa Al-Hawsawi, who was suffering from a medical emergency, the CIA closed the facility in 2006. According to a 2014 Washington Post investigation, because the Pentagon refused to assist, the CIA was forced to spend millions of dollars to obtain assistance from "third-party countries."
Singh warned, “The significance of that failure is that until there is genuine accountability for engaging in torture and/or being complicit in that torture, there is no meaningful way to ensure that this torture will not happen again."
