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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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November 18th,
2009 - CIA Secret ‘Torture’ Prison Found at Horseback Riding Academy |
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CIA Secret ‘Torture’ Prison
Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy ABC News Finds the Location of a “Black Site” for Alleged Terrorists
in Lithuania By Brian Ross & Matthew Cole ABC News November 18, 2009 The CIA built one of its
secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius,
Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S.
intelligence official told ABC News this week. Where affluent Lithuanians
once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a café, the CIA installed a
concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to
eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a time. A full report on the can be
seen on ABC's World News with Charles Gibson tonight. "The activities in that
prison were illegal," said human rights researcher John Sifton.
"They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation,
forced standing, painful stress positions." Lithuanian officials provided
ABC News with the documents of what they called a CIA front company, Elite,
LLC, which purchased the property and built the "black site" in
2004. Lithuania agreed to allow
the CIA prison after President George W. Bush visited the country in 2002 and
pledged support for Lithuania's efforts to join NATO. "The new members of
NATO were so grateful for the U.S. role in getting them into that
organization that they would do anything the U.S. asked for during that
period," said former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke,
now an ABC News consultant. "They were eager to please and eager to be
cooperative on security and on intelligence matters." Lithuanian president Dalia
Grybauskaite declined ABC's request for an interview. ABC News first reported that
Lithuania was one of three eastern European countries, along with Poland and
Romania, where the CIA secretly interrogated suspected high-value al-Qaeda
terrorists, but until now the precise site had not been confirmed. Until March 2004, the site
was a riding academy and café owned by a local family. The facility is in the
town of Antivilai, in the forest 20 kilometers northeast of the city center
of Vilnius, near an exclusive suburb where many government officials live. A “Building Within A Building” In March 2004, the family
sold the property to Elite, LLC, a now-defunct company registered in Delaware
and Panama and Washington, D.C. That same month, Lithuania marked its formal
admission to NATO. The CIA constructed the
prison over the next several months, apparently flying in prefabricated
elements from outside Lithuania. The prison opened in Sept. 2004. According to sources that
saw the facility, the riding academy originally consisted of an indoor riding
area with a red metallic roof, a stable and a cafe. The CIA built a thick
concrete wall inside the riding area. Behind the wall, it built what one
Lithuanian source called a "building within a building." On a series of thick
concrete pads, it installed what a source called "prefabricated
pods" to house prisoners, each separated from the other by five or six
feet. Each pod included a shower, a bed and a toilet. Separate cells were
constructed for interrogations. The CIA converted much of the rest of the
building into garage space. Intelligence officers
working at the prison were housed next door in the converted stable, raising
the roof to add space. Electrical power for both structures was provided by a
2003 Caterpillar autonomous generator. All the electrical outlets in the
renovated structure were 110 volts, meaning they were designed for American
appliances. European outlets and appliances typically use 220 volts. The prison pods inside the
barn were not visible to locals. They describe seeing large amounts of earth
being excavated during the summer of 2004. Locals who saw the activity at the
prison and approached to ask for work were turned away by English-speaking
guards. The guards were replaced by new guards every 90 days. Former CIA officials
directly involved or briefed on the highly classified secret prison program
tell ABC News that as many as eight suspects were held for more than a year
in the Vilnius prison. Flight logs viewed by ABC News confirm that CIA planes
made repeated flights into Lithuania during that period. In November 2005,
after public disclosures about the program, the prison was closed, as was
another "black site" in Romania. The CIA moved the so-called
High Value Detainees (HVD) out of Europe to "war zone" facilities,
according to one of the former CIA officials, meaning they were moved to the
Middle East. Within nine months, President Bush announced the existence of the
program and ordered the transfer of 14 of the detainees, including Khalid
Sheikh Muhammad, Ramzi bin al Shihb and Abu Zubaydah, to Guantanamo. In August 2009, after ABC
News reported the existence of the secret prison outside Vilnius, Lithuanian
president Grybauskaite called for an investigation. "If this is
true," Grybauskaite said, "Lithuania has to clean up, accept
responsibility, apologize, and promise it will never happen again." At the time, a Lithuanian
government official denied that his country had hosted a secret CIA facility.
The CIA told ABC News that reporting the existence of the Lithuanian prison
was "irresponsible" and declined to discuss the location of the
prison. On Tuesday, the CIA again
declined to talk about the prison. "The CIA's terrorist interrogation
program is over," said CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano. "This agency
does not discuss publicly where detention facilities may or may not have
been." Former CIA officials told
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
also been identified as countries that housed secret prisons for the CIA.
President Barack Obama ordered all the sites closed shortly after taking
office in January. The Lithuanian prison was
the last "black" site opened in Europe, after the CIA's secret
prison in Poland was closed down in late 2003 or early 2004. "It obviously took a
lot of effort to keep [the prison] secret," said John Sifton, whose firm
One World Research investigates human rights abuses. "There's a reason
this stuff gets kept secret." "It's an embarrassment,
and a crime." Copyright © 2009 ABC News
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