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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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August 20th,
2009 - Officials: Lithuania Hosted Secret CIA Prison To Get “Our Ear” |
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Officials:
Lithuania Hosted Secret CIA Prison To Get “Our Ear” “Irresponsible” To Identify Secret Sites, Says CIA; Lithuania Denies
Allegation By Matthew Cole ABC News August 20, 2009 A third European country has
been identified to ABC News as providing the CIA with facilities for a secret
prison for high-value al Qaeda suspects: Lithuania, the former Soviet state. Former CIA officials
directly involved or briefed on the highly classified program tell ABC News
that Lithuanian officials provided the CIA with a building on the outskirts
of Vilnius, the country's capital, where as many as eight suspects were held
for more than a year, until late 2005 when they were moved because of public disclosures
about the program. Flight logs viewed by ABC News confirm that CIA planes
made repeated flights into Lithuania during that period. The CIA told ABC News that
reporting the location of the now-closed prison was
"irresponsible." "The CIA does not
publicly discuss where facilities associated with its past detention program
may or may not have been located," said CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano.
"We simply do not comment on those types of claims, which have appeared
in the press from time to time over the years. The dangers of airing such
allegations are plain. These kinds of assertions could, at least potentially,
expose millions of people to direct threat. That is irresponsible." Former CIA officials tell
ABC News that the prison in Lithuania was one of eight facilities the CIA
set-up after 9/11 to detain and interrogate top al Qaeda operatives captured
around the world. Thailand, Romania, Poland, Morocco, and Afghanistan have
previously been identified as countries that housed secret prisons for the
CIA. According to a former
intelligence official involved in the program, the former Soviet Bloc country
agreed to host a prison because it wanted better relations with the U.S.
Asked whether the Bush administration or the CIA offered incentives in return
for allowing the prison, the official said, "We didn't have to."
The official said, "They were happy to have our ear." Through their embassy in
Washington, the Lithuanian government denied hosting a secret CIA facility. "The Lithuanian
Government denies all rumors and interpretations about alleged secret prison
that supposedly functioned on Lithuanian soil and possibly was used by
[CIA]," said Tomas Gulbinas, an embassy spokesman. CIA Secret Prisons According to two top
government officials at the time, revelations about the existence of prisons
in Eastern Europe in late 2005 by the Washington Post and ABC News led the
CIA to close its facilities in Lithuania and Romania and move the al Qaeda
prisoners out of Europe. The so-called High Value Detainees (HVD) were moved
into "war zone" facilities, according to one of the former CIA
officials, meaning they were moved to Iraq and Afghanistan. Within nine
months, President Bush announced the existence of the program and ordered the
transfer of 14 of the detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin
al Shihb and Abu Zubaydah, to Guantanamo, where they remain in CIA custody. The CIA high value detainee
(HVD) program began after the March 2002 capture of Abu Zubaydah. Within
days, the CIA arranged for Zubaydah to be flown to Thailand. Later, in
mid-2003 after Thai government and intelligence officials became nervous
about hosting a secret prison for Zubaydah and a second top al Qaeda
detainee, according to a former CIA officer involved in the program. One was
transferred to a facility housed on a Polish intelligence base in December
2002, said a former official involved with transferring detainees. The
facility was known as Ruby Base, according to two former CIA officials
familiar with the location. One of the former CIA
officers involved in the secret prison program allowed ABC News to view
flight logs that show aircraft used to move detainees to and from the secret
prisons in Lithuania, Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, Morocco and
Guantanamo Bay. The purpose of the flights, said the officer, was to move
terrorist suspects. The official told ABC News that the CIA arranged for
false flight plans to be submitted to European aviation authorities. Planes
flying into and out of Lithuania, for example, were ordered to submit
paperwork that said they would be landing in nearby countries, despite
actually landing in Vilnius, he said. "Finland and Poland were used most
frequently" as false destinations, the former CIA officer told ABC News.
A similar system was used to land planes in Romania and Poland. Interrogation and Detention Program Lithuania, Poland, and
Romania have all ratified the U.N. Convention Against Torture as well as the
European Convention on Human Rights. All three countries' legal systems
prohibit torture and extrajudicial detention. Polish authorities are
currently conducting an investigation into whether any Polish law was broken
by government officials there in hosting one of the secret prisons, according
to a published report in the German magazine Der Spiegel. "There are important
legal issues at stake," said human rights researcher John Sifton.
"As with Poland and Romania, CIA personnel involved in any secret
detentions and interrogations in Lithuania were not only committing
violations of U.S. federal law and international law, they were also breaking
Lithuanian laws relating to lawless detention, assault, torture, and possibly
war crimes. Lithuanian officials who worked with the CIA were breaking
applicable Lithuanian laws as well." Washington has been sharply
divided over whether investigations into the interrogation and detention
program should be opened. The CIA has been ordered by a federal judge to
declassify and release much of the agency's inspector general report about
the first years of the program by next week. Attorney General Eric Holder
has said that he is weighing whether he should appoint a special prosecutor
to investigate alleged abuses in the program after reading the IG report. At
issue are instances of abuse that went beyond the guidelines set up by the
Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which included waterboarding and sleep
deprivation of up to 11 days, according to people aware of Holder's thinking.
President Obama has called the practices "torture" and abolished
the program within a few days of taking office this year. But the president
has also said that his administration intended to "look forward"
not backward at Bush-era policies of interrogation and detention. One current intelligence
official involved in declassifying the IG report told ABC News that the
unredacted portions will reveal how and when CIA interrogators used methods
and tactics that were not permitted by the OLC. "The focus will be on
the cases where rules were broken," the official said. "But
remember that all instances were referred to the Justice Department and only
one resulted in a prosecution," said the official, referring to the
conviction of CIA contractor David Passaro, who beat an Afghan detainee to
death in 2003. Copyright © 2009 ABC News
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