Investigation finds Lithuania had secret CIA jails

Reuters

VILNIUS (Reuters) – The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ran a secret prison in Lithuania and al Qaeda suspects may have been held there, a parliamentary probe in the Baltic state found on Tuesday.

Talk of secret jails have been a hot topic in Lithuania and the head of the domestic intelligence agency has already resigned. U.S. broadcaster ABC news reported in August that Lithuania was the third European country after Poland and Romania to host secret CIA jails.

Some CIA staff are reported to have said the use of overseas detention centres was designed to circumvent U.S. law.

Arvydas Anusauskas, the head of parliament’s national security and defense committee, said the investigation found the domestic intelligence service opened two detention centres in cooperation with the CIA.

Top officials were not informed about the jails, and there was no political approval, he said. The committee said it could not exclude that people had been held in the second, larger jail.

Anusauskas told a news conference CIA flights entered Lithuania but it had not been possible to determine who had been on board.

ABC News said the secret CIA prison operated near Vilnius airport from early 2004 to late 2005 and that CIA planes flew into Lithuania with top level al Qaeda suspects.

The investigation was the second into the secret jail allegations, insisted upon by President Dalia Grybauskaite after an earlier probe found no evidence.

“It (the investigation) only proves suspicions she had for some time that there were premises designed for detention and there were flights which could have been used for transporting prisoners,” the president’s spokesman, Linas Balsys.

Lithuania’s ambassador to Georgia, Mecys Llaurinkus who led the state security department from June 1998 until April 2004, was recalled by Grybauskaite.

The investigation found five planes related to the CIA landed in Lithuania in 2003-2006, and that domestic intelligence officials prevented customs and border guards inspecting them.

“The president has no doubts that bilateral Lithuania-U.S. relationship cannot be overshadowed by these conclusions,” the spokesman added.

(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis; Editing by Matthew Jones)
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Lithuania may have hosted two U.S. ‘war on terror’ jails

Marielle Vitureau, Agence France-Presse

VILNIUS – Staunch U.S. ally Lithuania may have hosted two ‘war on terror’ lock-ups used by American agents to interrogate suspected al-Qaida members, the head of an inquiry commission said Tuesday.

“The sites existed,” Arvydas Anusauskas told reporters as he presented the findings of a probe launched last month by Lithuanian lawmakers. “And planes landed.”

But Anusauskas noted it was not possible to say if any suspects were actually brought to the Baltic state.

“Regarding the ‘cargo’, I can’t confirm anything, because Lithuanian authorities could not carry out the usual checks, so what was being transported was unknown,” he explained.

Lithuania’s parliament called for an investigation after the U.S. television channel ABC alleged that the ex-Soviet republic had hosted a CIA “black site”, or secret facility, for a handful of captives.

ABC cited unnamed former intelligence officials. The move, it was told, was a trade-off for Washington’s unbending support for Lithuania’s 2004 NATO admission.

Ex-communist U.S. allies Romania and Poland have faced similar claims in the past.

“We have identified the sites. The first project was developed from 2002. In response to the wishes of our partners and the conditions that were imposed, the site was meant to host one person. The second site was created in 2004,” Anusauskas said.

The second site is believed to have been a converted riding school in the hamlet of Antaviliai, some 20 kilometres (13 miles) from Vilnius.

It was purchased in March 2004 by a U.S.-registered firm Elite LLC — which ABC has claimed was a CIA front.

According to information obtained by AFP, the U.S. embassy in Vilnius was involved in acquiring the site for two million litas (579,000 euros, 829,000 dollars).

“The lay-out of the buildings, their secret nature, the fence around the site, plus the only sporadic visits by VSD operatives, enabled our partners to carry out activities without VSD control and to use the place however they liked,” said Anusauskas, using the acronym for Lithuanian intelligence.

Lithuania’s land register shows that the Lithuanian state bought the property in January 2007. It reportedly has since served as a VSD training centre.

The probe found that five CIA-linked aircraft landed on Lithuanian soil from 2003 to 2006.

Two touched down in Vilnius on February 3, 2003, and October 6, 2005. In the second case, border guards were barred from checking the plane, Anusauskas said.

Three other aircraft landed at Palanga, on the Baltic coast, around 330 kilometres from Vilnius, on January 2 and February 18, 2005, and March 25, 2006.

Anusauskas said the probe had concluded that Lithuania’s two presidents over the period, Rolandas Paksas and Valdas Adamkus, were “not informed, or only informed superficially” about the sites.

Earlier this month, Paksas said that in 2003 he declined a VSD request to transfer suspected terrorists to Lithuania. The VSD boss at the time, Mecys Laurinkus, confirmed this month he made the request but claimed it was hypothetical.

The probe urged Lithuania’s chief prosecutor to investigate whether Laurinkus, his VSD predecessor Arvydas Pocius, and their deputy Dainius Dabasinskas, had overstepped their office.
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