A US Senate report proves that Lithuania hosted a secret CIA jail for terror suspects a decade ago, a lawyer for a Saudi-born Guantanamo detainee claimed Friday. In a file submitted to the European Court of Human Rights, Helen Duffy said the 2014 American findings leave "no plausible room for doubt" that the Baltic state was involved in the Central Intelligence Agency programme.
"Simply on the basis of the information in the Senate report itself, there are numerous clear indications of agreements reached between Lithuanian officials and the CIA, and of large sums of money changing hands in exchange for support," she said in the application. Duffy insisted that the Nato and EU member is "responsible for the black site detention and torture" of her client Abu Zubaydah on its soil a decade ago.
The Palestinian is currently being held in a US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Lithuanian prosecutors this year reopened an investigation into the CIA prison allegations. The case against Lithuania was sent to the Strasbourg-based court in 2011, but Duffy said last year's US report by Democratic senators produced further evidence.
The report did not explicitly name European countries involved, but human rights activists said Lithuania hosted a lock-up described as detention centre "Violet" that operated in 2005-6.