“a. The HVD is flown to a Black Site. A medical examination is conducted prior to the flight. During the flight, the detainee is securely shackled and is deprived of sight and sound through the use of blindfolds, earmuffs, and hoods. [REDACTED] There is no interaction with the HVD during this rendition movement except for periodic, discreet assessments by the on-board medical officer.

b. Upon arrival at the destination airfield, the HVD is moved to the Black Site under the same conditions and using appropriate security procedures.”

“The HVD is subjected to administrative procedures and medical assessment upon arrival at the Black Site. [REDACTED] the HVD finds himself in the complete control of Americans; [REDACTED] the procedures he is subjected to are precise, quiet, and almost clinical; and no one is mistreating him. While each HVD is different, the rendition and reception process generally creates significant apprehension in the HVD because of the enormity and suddenness of the change in environment, the uncertainty about what will happen next, and the potential dread an HVD might have of US custody. Reception procedures include:

a. The HVD's head and face are shaved.

b. A series of photographs are taken of the HVD while nude to document the physical condition of the HVD upon arrival.

c. A Medical Officer interviews the HVD and a medical evaluation is conducted to assess the physical condition of the HVD. The medical officer also determines if there are any contra indications to the use of interrogation techniques.

d. A psychologist interviews the HVD to assess his mental state. The psychologist also determines if there are any contra indications to the use of interrogation techniques.”

“Interrogators use the Initial Interview to assess the initial resistance posture of the HVD and to determine – in a relatively benign environment – if the HVD intends to willingly participate with CIA interrogators. The standard on participation is set very high during the Initial Interview. The HVD would have to willingly provide information on actionable threats and location information on High-Value Targets at large not lower level information for interrogators to continue with the neutral approach. [REDACTED] to HQS. Once approved, the interrogation process begins provided the required medical and psychological assessments contain no contra indications to interrogation.”

“[B]y requiring advance approval of ‘standard techniques’ ‘whenever feasible, the guidelines allowed CIA officers a significant amount of discretion to determine who could be subjected to the CIA's ‘standard’ interrogation techniques, when those techniques could be applied, and when it was not ‘feasible’ to request advance approval from CIA Headquarters. Thus, consistent with the interrogation guidelines, throughout much of 2003, CIA officers (including personnel not trained in interrogation) could, at their discretion, strip a detainee naked, shackle him in the standing position for up to 72 hours, and douse the detainee repeatedly with cold water without approval from CIA Headquarters if those officers judged CIA Headquarters approval was not ‘feasible’. In practice, CIA personnel routinely applied these types of interrogation techniques without obtaining prior approval.”

“… the CIA detainees are in constantly illuminated cells, substantially cut off from human contact, and under 24-hour-a-day surveillance. We also recognize that many of the detainees have been in the program for several years and thus that we cannot evaluate these conditions as if they have occurred only for a passing moment … .

Nevertheless, we recognize that the isolation experienced by the CIA detainees may impose a psychological toll. In some cases, solitary confinement may continue for years and may alter the detainee's ability to interact with others. …”

“Within the context of the extraordinary renditions, the CIA had often used private companies and charter services for aircraft rentals. Through the civil aviation it is possible to reach places where the military aircraft would be seen suspiciously. Thanks to the civil aviation, the CIA avoids the duty to provide the information required by States concerning government or military flights.

Most of these companies are the so-called shell companies: they only exist on papers (post offices boxes, for instance) or they have a sole employee (normally a lawyer). These shell companies appear the owners of some aircrafts which are systematically object of buy-and-sell operations. After each transaction, planes are re-registered in order to [lose] their tracks. …

Sometimes shell companies used by CIA rely on other real companies endowed with premises and employees (so called: operating companies). These companies are entrusted to stand behind the shell companies; they provide the CIA aircrafts with all necessary logistics (pilots, catering, technical assistance). In some cases the operating companies are directly linked to the CIA. One example is Aero Contractor, a company described by the New York Times as the ‘major domestic hub of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret air service.

The system is well described by the New York Times:

‘An analysis of thousands of flight records, aircraft registrations and corporate documents, as well as interviews with former C.I.A. officers and pilots, show that the agency owns at least 26 planes, 10 of them purchased since 2001. The agency has concealed its ownership behind a web of seven shell corporations that appear to have no employees and no function apart from owning the aircraft. The planes, regularly supplemented by private charters, are operated by real companies controlled by or tied to the agency, including Aero Contractors and two Florida companies, Pegasus Technologies and Tepper Aviation.’

Finally, in other cases, the CIA leases airplanes from normal charter agents, as it is the case for Richmor Aviation. Richmor Aviation is one of the oldest charter and flight management companies. The Gulfstream IV, N85VM belongs to Richmor Aviation (plane involved in the abduction of Abu Omar).

Ultimately, in this inextricable net, there is also the possibility that single aircrafts change their registration numbers (as for the Gulfstrean V, from Richmor Aviation, registered as N379P, then, N8068V and then N44982).

There are indeed 51 airplanes alleged to be used in the extraordinary renditions, but, according the Federal Aviation Administration records, there would be 57 registration numbers. It comes out that some of them are registered more than once.

Among the 51 airplanes alleged to be used by CIA:

26 planes are registered to shell companies and sometimes supported by operating companies.

10 are designed as ‘CIA frequent flyers, they belong to Blackwater USA, an important CIA and US Army ‘classified contractor’. It provides staff, training and aviation logistic. In this case there is no intermediation of shell companies.

The other 15 planes are from occasional rental from private companies working with CIA as well as with other customers.”

“The Senate Intelligence Committee this afternoon voted to declassify the 480-page executive summary as well as 20 findings and conclusions of the majority's five-year study of the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program, which involved more than 100 detainees.

The purpose of this review was to uncover the facts behind this secret program, and the results were shocking. The report exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation. It chronicles a stain on our history that must never again be allowed to happen. …

The report also points to major problems with CIA's management of this program and its interactions with the White House, other parts of the executive branch and Congress. This is also deeply troubling and shows why oversight of intelligence agencies in a democratic nation is so important. …

The full 6,200-page full report has been updated and will be held for declassification at a later time.”

“Beginning with the CIA's first detainee, Abu Zubaydah, and continuing with numerous others, the CIA applied its enhanced interrogation techniques with significant repetition for days or weeks at a time. Interrogation techniques such as slaps and ‘wallings’ (slamming detainees against a wall) were used in combination, frequently concurrent with sleep deprivation and nudity. Records do not support CIA representations that the CIA initially used an ‘an open, nonthreatening approach’, or that interrogations began with the ‘least coercive technique possible’ and escalated to more coercive techniques only as necessary.

The waterboarding technique was physically harmful, inducing convulsions and vomiting. Abu Zubaydah, for example, became ‘completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth’. Internal CIA records describe the waterboarding of Khaled Shaykh Mohammad as evolving into a ‘series of near drownings’.

Sleep deprivation involved keeping detainees awake for up to 180 hours, usually standing or in stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads. At least five detainees experienced disturbing hallucinations during prolonged sleep deprivation and, in at least two of those cases, the CIA nonetheless continued the sleep deprivation.

Contrary to CIA representations to the Department of Justice, the CIA instructed personnel that the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah would take ‘precedence’ over his medical care, resulting in the deterioration of a bullet wound Abu Zubaydah incurred during his capture. …”

“Even after the conditions of confinement improved with the construction of new detention facilities, detainees were held in total isolation except when being interrogated or debriefed by CIA personnel.

Throughout the program, multiple CIA detainees who were subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques and extended isolation exhibited psychological and behavioral issues, including hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia, and attempts at self-harm and self-mutilation.

Multiple psychologists identified the lack of human contact experienced by detainees as a cause of psychiatric problems.”

“The CIA blocked State Department leadership from access to information crucial to foreign policy decision-making and diplomatic activities. The CIA did not inform two secretaries of state of locations of CIA detention facilities, despite the significant foreign policy implications related to the hosting of clandestine CIA detention sites and the fact that the political leaders of host countries were generally informed of their existence. Moreover, CIA officers told U.S. ambassadors not to discuss the CIA program with State Department officials, preventing the ambassadors from seeking guidance on the policy implications of establishing CIA detention facilities in the countries in which they served.

In two countries, U.S. ambassadors were informed of plans to establish a CIA detention site in the countries where they were serving after the CIA had already entered into agreements with the countries to host the detention sites. In two other countries where negotiations on hosting new CIA detention facilities were taking place, the CIA told local government officials not to inform the U.S. ambassadors.”

“to encourage governments to clandestinely host CIA detention sites, or to increase support for existing sites, the CIA provided millions of dollars in cash payments to foreign government officials. The CIA Headquarters encouraged CIA Stations to construct ‘wish lists’ of proposed financial assistance to [phrase REDACTED] [entities of foreign governments] and to ‘think big’ in terms of that assistance”.

“1. Were CIA detainees subject to transportation and confinement on the territory of the Republic of Lithuania?

According to the data of the state enterprise Oro navigacija [Air Navigation], in 2002-2005 the US aircraft referred to in the media and official investigations of the European Parliament as aircraft used to transport CIA detainees, i.e. N85VM (GLF4), N2189M (C-130), N8183J (C-130), N8213G (C-130), 510MG (GLF4), N313P (Boeing 737), No N379P, (GLF5), N1HC (GLF5), crossed Lithuania's airspace on 29 occasions. These data were presented on 28 April 2006 when preparing a reply to an inquiry by Dick Marty, Chairman of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, regarding the numbers of 41 aircraft indicated therein.

In the course of the investigation, the Committee established that three occasions of crossing of Lithuania's airspace were omitted in the mentioned reply to … D. Marty … and in the data provided by the state enterprise Oro navigacija:

(1) CASA C-212 N96IBW, landed in Palanga on 2 January 2005;

(2) Boeing 737 N787WH, landed in Palanga on 18 February 2005;

(3) Boeing 737 N787WH, landed in Vilnius on 6 October 2005.

In the course of the investigation, with a view to verifying whether the CIA-related aircraft indicated in the material of the Temporary Committee of the European Parliament landed at Lithuania's airports and whether the enterprises referred to in the material made financial settlements for servicing of these aircraft, the Civil Aviation Administration was addressed and provided the information on the flights of the US aircraft, based on the data and financial documents of the companies and aircraft service enterprises operating at Vilnius, Kaunas, Šiauliai and Palanga airports.

When comparing the submitted data with the material of the Temporary Committee of the European Parliament, it was established that:

Two CIA-related aircraft landed at Vilnius International Airport:

(1) ‘C-130’, registration No N8213G (4 February 2003, route Frankfurt-Vilnius-Warsaw, landed at 6.15 p.m., departed at 7.27 p.m.);

(2) ‘Boeing 737’, registration No N787WH (6 October 2005, route Antalya-Tallinn-Vilnius-Oslo. A letter from Vilnius International Airport dated 7 December 2009 states that this aircraft arrived from Tirana at 4.54 a.m. and departed at 5.59 a.m. According to the documents of the SBGS, this aircraft arrived from Antalya and departed for Oslo).

Three CIA-related aircraft landed at Palanga International Airport:

(1) ‘CASA C-212’, registration No N961BW (2 January 2005, operator Presidential Airways, route Flesland (Norway)-Palanga-Simferopol (Ukraine), departed on 5 January 2005 at 9 a.m.);

(2) ‘Boeing 737’, registration No N787WH (18 February 2005, operator Victory Aviation, route Bucharest-Palanga-Copenhagen, arrived at 6.09 p.m., departed at 7.30 p.m. It was recorded that the aircraft arrived carrying five passengers and three crew members);

(3) ‘Boeing 737-800’, registration No N733MA (25 March 2006, route Porto (Portugal)-Palanga-Porto, arrived at 10.25 p.m. and departed at 11.55 p.m.).

In the course of the investigation, the Committee did not establish any cases of CIA-related aircraft landing at Kaunas and Šiauliai airports.

Attention should be drawn to the fact that the Committee did not receive any data or documents from Vilnius International Airport or airport service companies confirming that on 20 September 2004 and in July 2005 (the exact date was not specified by the US television channel ABC News) presumable CIA-related aircraft landed at Vilnius International Airport.

In the course of the parliamentary investigation, the SSD submitted information regarding its cooperation with the SBGS in 2002-2006. It is evident from the documents submitted to the Committee that there had been an intensive exchange of data (including data provided by partners regarding the search for persons suspected of terrorism) in the field of combating terrorism. A period of time from April 2004 until September 2005 during which the SSD did not provide any information on the suspected terrorists to the SBGS should be singled out.

During the investigation, three occasions were established on which, according to the testimony of the SSD officers, they received the aircraft and escorted what was brought by them with the knowledge of the heads of the SSD:

(1) ‘Boeing 737’, registration No N787WH, which landed in Palanga on 18 February 2005. According to data submitted by the SBGS, five passengers arrived in that aircraft, none of whom was mentioned by the former Deputy Director General of the SSD Dainius Dabašinskas in the explanations he gave the Committee at the meeting. According to Customs data, no thorough customs inspection of the aircraft was carried out and no cargo was unloaded from it or onto it;

(2) ‘Boeing 737’, registration No N787WH, which landed in Vilnius on 6 October 2005. According to data submitted by the SBGS, its officers were prevented from inspecting the aircraft; therefore, it is impossible to establish whether any passengers were on board of the aircraft. No customs inspection of the aircraft was carried out;

(3) ‘Boeing 737-800’, registration No N733MA, which landed in Palanga on 25 March 2006. According to Customs data, no customs inspection was carried out. The documents of the SBGS contain no records of the landing and inspection of this aircraft.

Persons providing explanations to the Committee indicated that in similar cases cooperation takes place in accordance with the provisions of the Law on Intelligence in relation to the provision of assistance to an intelligence service in getting unrestricted access to aircraft and access to/departure from the territory of the airport; however, as indicated by the information submitted by the SBGS, upon the landing of the unscheduled aircraft from Antalya at Vilnius International Airport at 5.15 am on 6 October 2005, civil aviation officers prevented the SBGS officer from approaching the aircraft. In his official report, the officer stated that a car drove away from the aircraft and left the territory of the airport border control point. Upon contacting the civil aviation officers, it was explained that the heads of the SBGS had been informed of the landing of the above mentioned aircraft and the actions taken by the civil aviation officers. The letter from the SSD marked as ‘CLASSIFIED’ regarding the mentioned event was received by the SBGS on 7 October 2005, i.e., post factum.

It should to be noted that before the above mentioned event, the SSD had never issued any letters of similar content to other services. The explanations provided in the course of the investigation make it evident that oral arrangements had been made with representatives of the airport and aviation security.

In the course of the investigation, another occasion was established on which the SSD applied to the SBGS with a similar letter (24 March 2006) in relation to the flight of an aircraft to Palanga airport on 25 March 2006.

As explained by the heads of the SBGS, this is a common cooperation practice. According to Commander of the SBGS General S. Stripeika, had the SBGS received the letter from the SSD before 6 October 2005, the incident would have not occurred and officers of the SBGS would have not interfered with the activities of the SSD.

In 2002-2005, the aircraft which official investigations link to the transportation of CIA detainees crossed the airspace of the Republic of Lithuania on repeated occasions. The data collected by the Committee indicate that CIA-related aircraft did land in Lithuania within the mentioned period of time.

The Committee failed to establish whether CIA detainees were transported through the territory of the Republic of Lithuania or were brought into or out of the territory of the Republic of Lithuania; however, conditions for such transportation did exist.

Deputy Director General of the SSD D. Dabašinskas, with the knowledge of Director General of the SSD A. Pocius, provided the US officers with opportunities to have unrestricted access to the aircraft on at least two occasions. In addition, at least on one occasion the opportunities for inspection of the aircraft by the SBGS officers were deliberately restricted. In all the above-mentioned cases, there was no customs inspection. Therefore, it was impossible to establish either the identity of the passengers or the purpose of the cargo.

2. Did secret CIA detention centres operate in the territory of the Republic of Lithuania?

The cases of partnership cooperation which are of relevance to the parliamentary investigation, carried out by the SSD in 2002-2006 and involving the equipment of certain tailored facilities, may be referred to as Project No. 1 and Project No. 2.

Based on the information received in the course of the parliamentary investigation, the implementation of partnership cooperation Project No. 1 was commenced by the SSD in 2002. In the course of the project, facilities suitable for holding detainees were equipped, taking account of the requests and conditions set out by the partners. Director General of the SSD M. Laurinkus and his deputy D. Dabašinskas both had knowledge of the project. When instructing the contractors to equip the facilities, the latter mentioned that the project ‘had been blessed by the top officials of the State’; however, according to the testimony of the then political leadership, they had not been informed of it.

According to the data available to the Committee, the facilities were not used for the purpose of holding detainees. At present, they are used for other purposes.

The SSD submitted information that based on the documents held by the SSD, these facilities were equipped for the purpose other than holding detainees.

The implementation of Project No. 2, which was also examined in the course of the parliamentary investigation, was commenced by the SSD in the beginning of 2004. The necessary acquisitions were made for the purpose of implementation of the project, construction works were carried out to equip the facility, with the progress of works ensured by the partners themselves. The building was reconstructed to meet certain security requirements.

The SSD officers participated in the implementation of this project together with partners and, according to the officers, had unrestricted access to all the premises of the facility, however, when representatives of the partners were present in the facility, they did not visit some of the premises. The time of such meetings and adequate arrangements were communicated to the SSD officers by Deputy Director General of the SSD D. Dabašinskas.

According to the SSD officers, representatives of the partners were never left alone in the facility. They were always accompanied by either D. Dabašinskas or one of the SSD officers.

According to the information received in the course of the investigation, it is evident that the SSD did not seek to control the activities of the partners in Project No. 2. The SSD did not monitor and record cargoes brought in and out and did not control the arrival and departure of the partners; in addition, the SSD did not always have the possibility to observe every person arriving and departing.

The procedure for accounting and using monetary funds and material valuables intended for financing of joint actions is approved by internal regulations of the SSD, however, based on the explanation provided in the course of the parliamentary investigation regarding one of the implemented joint projects and monetary funds used for its implementation, the accounting of these funds was inappropriate. Explanations provided by individual persons in relation to the sources of financing of joint actions, amounts of monetary funds used for separate actions or accounting thereof are not consistent and therefore require further investigation.

The Committee established that the SSD had received a request from the partners to equip facilities in Lithuania suitable for holding detainees.

While implementing Project No. 1 in 2002, conditions were created for holding detainees in Lithuania; however, according to the data available to the Committee, the premises were not used for that purpose.

The persons who gave testimony to the Committee deny any preconditions for and possibilities of holding and interrogating detainees at the facilities of Project No. 2; however, the layout of the building, its enclosed nature and protection of the perimeter as well as fragmented presence of the SSD staff in the premises allowed for the performance of actions by officers of the partners without the control of the SSD and use of the infrastructure at their discretion.

3. Did state institutions of the Republic of Lithuania (politicians, officers and civil servants) consider the issues relating to activities of secret CIA detention centres in the territory of the Republic of Lithuania, transportation and confinement of detainees in the territory of the Republic of Lithuania?

The Committee received certain information about international cooperation of the SSD with partners and application of special measures provided for in the Law on Intelligence during joint operations. The legal basis of international cooperation of the SSD is laid down in the Law on Intelligence. …

When summarising [the relevant provisions of the Law on Intelligence], a conclusion should be drawn that legal acts do not directly require the directions (tasks) of international cooperation of the SSD to be approved at any specific political level (at the State Defence Council, the CNSD); such directions (tasks) used to arise from a general need for international cooperation and direct contacts of the SSD with secret services of other countries. However, in seeking to obtain recommendations of the State Defence Council concerning international cooperation, the SSD could submit to the State Defence Council (or the President of the Republic, who initiates sittings of the State Defence Council) the information necessary to draw up such recommendations. In 2002-2005, such issues were not considered at the State Defence Council and there were no recommendations. This is partially confirmed by the letter of the Secretary of the State Defence Council of 3 December 2009, stating that in 2001-2005 wide-scale direct cooperation between the SSD and CIA was mentioned only once - at a sitting of the State Defence Council (19 September 2001) when considering the issue on international terrorism and anti-terrorist actions and prevention, crisis management and the legal base.

None of the country's top officials, according to them, were informed about the purposes and content of partnership cooperation of the SSD in 2002. Only several officers of the SSD had knowledge of Project No. 1.

According to the testimony of the former Director General of the SSD M. Laurinkus, in mid-2003 he informed the then President of the Republic R. Paksas about a possibility, after Lithuania's accession to NATO, to receive a request to participate in the programme concerning the transportation of detainees. According to the testimony of R. Paksas, Lithuania was requested permission to bring into the country the persons suspected of terrorism. The information submitted to the President of the Republic did not contain any mention of a detention centre or a prison. In August of the same year, when President of the Republic R. Paksas enquired the then acting Director General D. Dabašinskas if there was any new information concerning Lithuania's participation in the said programme, he was told that there was no new information.

Although Director General of the SSD M. Laurinkus received a negative answer from President of the Republic R. Paksas regarding the bringing into the Republic of Lithuania of persons interrogated by the USA, neither the then President of the Republic R. Paksas nor acting President of the Republic A. Paulauskas was asked for political approval of activities under Project No. 2. M. Laurinkus had knowledge of launching the activities under Project No. 2 in March–April 2004. According to President of the Republic V. Adamkus, he was informed about cooperation with the USA in general terms and no information was provided to him about running of Project No. 2 in 2004-2006. According to A. Pocius, President of the Republic V. Adamkus and his advisors were adequately informed of the project. Several SSD officers, including M. Laurinkus, A. Pocius, D. Dabašinskas, had the knowledge of Project No. 2 at the time of launching and running thereof.

On 18 August 2009, Head of the SSD P. Malakauskas informed President of the Republic D. Grybauskaitė (as well as former Presidents of the Republic V. Adamkus and A. M. Brazauskas) that ABC News was preparing articles about the CIA detainees who had allegedly been confined in Lithuania and planning to name one of the facilities owned by the SSD as a prison. P. Malakauskas could not deny the possibility of confinement in Lithuania of the persons detained by the CIA.

Likewise, while considering the reports of the SSD, the CNSD was provided information about international cooperation in a fragmentary manner. For instance, when considering the SSD's activity report of 2003, it was mentioned that ‘cooperation with NATO member states is in progress. A wish for more active cooperation with the SSD can already be perceived on the side of the Allies, which will require additional staff, investments.’ Decisions of the CNSD on the SSD's reports never contained any proposals concerning international cooperation.

Information gathered by the Committee and the explanations received by it show that the State Defence Council, the Government and the Seimas have not considered issues relating to any activities of secret CIA detention centres in the territory of the Republic of Lithuania, or to the transportation and confinement of detainees in the territory of the Republic of Lithuania.

According to the country's top officials (Presidents of the Republic, Prime Ministers, and Speakers of the Seimas), the members of the CNSD of the Seimas were informed about the international cooperation between the SSD and the CIA in a general fashion, without discussing specific operations or their outcomes. The mention of wide-scale direct cooperation between the SSD and CIA was made only once, at a sitting of the State Defence Council (19 September 2001) when considering the issue of international terrorism and anti-terrorist actions and prevention, crisis management and the legal bases for all these. Transportation and detention of detainees were not discussed at the sitting of the State Defence Council of Lithuania. The CNSD of the Seimas was not informed of the nature of the cooperation taking place.

On the basis of the information received, the Committee established that when carrying out the SSD partnership cooperation Project No. 1 and Project No. 2, the then heads of the SSD did not inform any of the country's top officials of the purposes and content of the said Projects.”

“MP A. Anušauskas, Chairman of the CNSD, is invited to present the draft Resolution on the Findings.

… During the investigation, the Committee obtained considerable amount of secret information, ranging from restricted to highly classified information marked as ‘Top Secret’. Because of the high amount of classified information, the preparation of the findings was not an easy task.

The classified information was related to the activities of secret services and subtle options the services use in their work. Without these subtle options, neither intelligence nor cooperation with the special services of other states in such areas as fight with terrorism would be possible.

Despite that, parliamentary control of secret services must nevertheless be exceptional and strong. Some of the data, gathered during the investigation, were not made public as it constitutes a state secret.

To summarize the investigation, the Committee has established that CIA aircraft have landed in Lithuania. It has not established whether the persons detained by the CIA were transported to or transferred through the Lithuanian territory; the heads of the SSD at that time created conditions for the U.S. officers to access the planes unobstructed at least on two occasions.

Moreover, at least once State Border Guard Service officers were prevented from performing border control checks. During all of the mentioned incidents, customs inspections were not carried out.

The Committee has established that the SSD received a request from partners to install premises in Lithuania, suitable for keeping detainees. …

QUESTIONS

(all replies are by MP Anušauskas, Conservative Party, ruling coalition)

MP V. Mazuronis (Order and Justice Party, opposition)

Question: I pity you that you had such an ungrateful task, similar to searching for life on Mars. I can only express my sympathy for you. But my question is that I have found in the text of the findings that President Adamkus was briefed of the cooperation with the U.S. in general terms only, but he was never informed of the Project No. 2. Mr Pocius claims in his testimony, however, that the President and his advisers were adequately informed. I can see a contradiction here and my question would be who of those two individuals have lied? The one saying he was not informed or the one saying he has informed properly? Or maybe there is a way, according to our laws, of informing without actually giving information?

Reply: Yes, the question of the level of awareness by the heads of State was being actively discussed. I have to say that in this case we relied on oral testimonies. The thing is that there are no written documents, and no recommendations issued by the State Defence Council. That means, we had to rely on testimonies given by the highest state officials. On the other hand, the former SSD officer, who was named by you, introduced us to four methods of passing information onto the head of State. Only one of those methods seemed adequate. I will not name all of them, but one of them was ‘I have informed through President's advisers, and I don't know if they understood’. In this case [replying to your question - M.A.], I think, we can select any of those two options which seems more acceptable to us.

MP V. Andriukaitis (Social Democratic Party, opposition)

Question: The Parliament has set very specific questions for the inquiry, and one of them was whether CIA detainees were transported to and detained in the territory of Lithuania. Your answer to that question is Solomon-like - that the Committee has not established but the preconditions for transportation existed. Preconditions for transportation exist in the whole world: trains, planes are flying, bicycles are being ridden. To the question whether secret detention centres were operating, you have also failed to answer. I want to ask you what exactly prevented you from answering those very specific questions - lack of data, lack of competence or maybe something else.

Reply: First of all, the Committee is not talking of such general preconditions as existence of airports, but very specific preconditions. That is, preconditions created by the SSD officers to enter the territory of Lithuania unobstructed, without aircraft inspections and customs inspections. These are relatively specific preconditions.

In this case, the findings are not based on assumptions, I will stress this, but on the testimonies of the witnesses and the documents obtained. Yes, we cannot show in the findings all of the details revealed by the testimonies and the contents of the documents obtained, because the detailed information on cooperation with foreign secret services, its proceedings, objects, contents and results constitute a state secret. In this case, this is not included in the text of the findings, but that does not mean that the Committee has not examined this data. Bearing this in mind, what might appear as assumptions at first, are based on facts and documents.

…

MP J. Juozapaitis (Social Democratic Party, opposition)

Question: Your committee writes in the findings that the preconditions were created for transportation and detention of persons. My question would be under whose orders and who has created those preconditions for transportation and detention of those prisoners in Lithuania?

Reply: I have to mention one circumstance which is often ignored. The Council of Europe and the European Parliament have also conducted investigations and established aircraft, planes which were transporting the prisoners. Some of them have acquired very clear names, and their routes were always directed to Guantánamo, and then back to Afghanistan, transiting through European states. A list of the aircraft emerged during those investigations. The aircraft was linked with transportation of prisoners. Yes, it is not known what was being transported, but it is known that the prisoners were being transported through European states. The aircraft have crossed Lithuanian airspace too. Who gave [the orders …] and who created preconditions? We named those individuals; three officers who were serving as deputies to the head of SSD, they are responsible for those actions and possible violations of the laws.

…

MP J. Veselka (Order and Justice Party, opposition)

Question: It is evident from your findings that a secret detention centre was built here for CIA money. Secondly, there were planes that were prevented by Dabašinskas from inspection. Further, George Bush has declared during his visit, that Lithuanian enemies are the US enemies. With no purpose, no one gives this kind of promises. Further, former SSD heads, as I see them, were great careerists and political cowards. Fifthly, former President Paksas testified to you that the SSD heads informed him about these matters. Hence, I draw the conclusion that the rest of the heads, who pretended they knew nothing, they, honestly speaking, lied to you, because those SSD officers, careerists and political cowards, could not have done this independently. Or do you think it's possible? What needs to be done to make the heads of State to tell the truth in this kind of situation?

Reply: There are amendments being prepared. First of all, it is necessary to make sure that document trail is left, because in this case a lot was being done by oral arrangements. I would not dare to claim the heads of State have lied. More likely they were not adequately informed, and their advisers testified that they were not being informed to an extent so that to get a clear picture of cooperation with partners. The provision of Intelligence Law, that some of the actions require recommendations from the State Defence Council, was ignored.”

“Unclassified evidence now in the public domain confirms that after being held in Thailand for around eight months, on 4 December 2002, Mr Husayn was ‘rendered’ with another prisoner to a secret prison in Szymany, Poland. Mr Husayn was held in Szymany for almost ten months before being transferred along with four other prisoners to a then-secret CIA section of the US military base at Guantánamo Bay. According to recent media reports, Mr Husayn was then held near Rabat, Morocco.

Mr Husayn arrived in Morocco in the spring of 2004. Between then and his second rendition to Guantánamo Bay in September 2006, recent information has come to us from a confidential and extremely reliable unclassified source, confirming that Mr Husayn was held in a secret CIA prison in Lithuania. This information come from the most credible sources inside the United States, and is not subject to doubt.

We need hardly remind you of Lithuania's duty to seriously investigate these allegations, and the importance of the preliminary work done by journalists and other fact-finders who protect their sources, in the exposure of US abuses on European soil.”

“[D]uring the pre-trial investigation not only were the circumstances related to abuse of official position with major legal significance (which was why the pre-trial investigation was initiated) investigated, but also the circumstances which define other criminal acts of which possible individual signs may be seen during the pre-trial investigation. Among such criminal acts are those you have pointed out should also be mentioned, namely illegal deprivation of liberty (Article 146 of the Criminal Code) as well as illegal transportation of people across national borders (Article 292 of the Criminal Code). Considering the fact that the pre-trial investigation in relation to the circumstances provided in your application is already being conducted, please be advised that the circumstances provided in your application will be considered when performing the said pre-trial investigation No. 01-2-00016-10.”

“As you are likely aware, there are substantial obstacles to obtaining and providing this information to you. But we are working diligently to overcome them. Mr Husayn's communications are subject to U.S. government imposed restrictions which require his U.S. counsel to submit all written communications from Mr Husayn to a government censor. We are in the process of attempting to obtain a statement from Mr Husayn that will provide evidence relevant to the questions submitted.

We previously recommended that, in addition, the Lithuanian authorities also request from the US authorities that they be allowed to interview Mr Husayn themselves, with counsel present. I note that a bilateral treaty provides your office with an agreed mechanism to seek independently such information from Mr Zubaydah. I refer specifically to the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Treaty between the United States and Lithuania, which entered into force on 26 August 1999. In addition to the testimony of Mr Zubaydah, you can seek to obtain numerous additional sources of information relevant to your investigation, some of which are listed below.”

“1. Sought to obtain testimony of Abu Zubaydah, regarding the unlawful detention and subjection to torture and inhuman, degrading treatment as well as the circumstances connected with his transportation between other places of detention and circumstances allowing the identification of the place where he was detained in the Republic of Lithuania;

2. Sought to obtain testimony regarding the capture of Abu Zubaydah, place or places of his detention, conditions in which he was detained, methods of his interrogation used by CIA officers and other persons who had access to him, from George Tenet (General Director of the CIA between 11 July 1997 and 11 July 2004); John McLaughlin (acting General Director of the CIA between 11 July 2004 and 24 September 2004); Porter Goss (General Director of the CIA between 24 September 2004 and 30 May 2006); Michael Hayden (General Director of the CIA between 30 May 2006 and 12 February 2009) and Leon Panetta (current Director of the CIA) as well as from other persons cooperating with CIA officers within the territory of the Republic of Lithuania and persons possessing knowledge about their activities;

3. Sought to obtain evidence from national and international repositories of aviation and flight data, including Eurocontrol and SITA, regarding flights into and out of Lithuania during this period by the following planes mentioned in the public record: N787WH, N733MA, N8213G, N88ZL, N961BW, N1HC and N63MU. In particular, please inform me whether you have sought to obtain records regarding the flights of

a. a plane registered as N961BW on or about 2 January 2005

b. a plane registered as N787WH on or about 18 February 2005

c. a plane registered as N733MA on or about 25 March 2006

d. a plane registered as N63MU on or about 28 July 2005, probably arriving at Vilnius Airport from Kabul;

e. Any other suspicious flights during the relevant time period;

4. Sought to obtain evidence from the sites of the alleged prisons and their environs, including eyewitness testimony, forensic testimony and testimony of potential key witnesses including employees at those sites during the period in question; and to this end required the preservation of evidence on the two identified sites, including traces of blood, hair and other biological specimens that would enable the prosecutor to identify the victims and perpetrators;

5. Sought to obtain testimony from the companies involved in flights into and out of Lithuania during this period by the planes discussed in the Committee's findings, including those who took part in trip planning, ground handling, refuelling, trash disposal and other services.

6. Sought to obtain testimony on flight routes and cargo, human and otherwise, from captain and crew flight into and out of Lithuania during this period by the planes mentioned above;

7. Sought to obtain testimony concerning conditions of confinement at CIA black sites from Geoff Loane and other authors of the International Committee of the Red Cross Report on the treatment of the fourteen high-value detainees in CIA custody dated 14 February 2007;

8. Sought to obtain testimony from key witnesses from Lithuanian state institutions, regarding cooperation with the USA in the ‘War on terror’ during the period in question, including former [Minister of National Defence] Gediminas Kirkilas, former President [of the Republic] Valdas Adamkus, former [Minister of the Interior] Virgilijus Bulovas, former [Minister of the Interior] Gintaras Furmanavičius, former [Minister of Foreign Affairs] Antanas Valionis, former [Minister of National Defence] Linas Linkevičius, former Deputy Director [of the] State Security Department Darius Jurgelevičius, former [Deputy Director] for Intelligence for State Security [Department] Dainius Dabašinskas, former [Minister of Foreign Affairs] Vygaudas Ušackas, President [of the Republic] Dalia Grybauskaitė, Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius; [Dainius] Žalimas, legal adviser to the Lithuanian [Ministry of National Defence].”

“In the course of the pre-trial investigation it has been established that the aircraft linked with the United States Central Intelligence Agency did arrive in and depart from the Republic of Lithuania. It has also been established that on some occasions Customs and State Border Protection Service inspections … were not carried out. However, on every occasion such actions were taken in accordance with the procedure stipulated by the Law on Intelligence [Article 9] and the appropriate airport and State Border Protection Service officials had been advised in advance in writing (or verbally) [that SSD officials would meet the aircraft and the goods]. This was confirmed by the documents in the case file which were provided by the SSD, and also by witnesses who have been questioned – airport staff and officials of the SBGS and the SSD. … It should be noted that Article 16 of the Law on Intelligence stipulates that State institutions and officials are not allowed to interfere with or otherwise influence intelligence activities carried out by intelligence officers. Official vehicles of intelligence staff may not be inspected without the permission of the Prosecutor General.

No data have been obtained in the course of the pre-trial investigation indicating that the aforementioned aircraft were used to illegally bring or remove any persons [to and from Lithuanian territory]. On the contrary, those questioned in the course of the investigation either categorically denied this or stated that they did not have any information in that regard. Obviously, given that no inspection of the aircraft or the motor vehicles used by the intelligence officers had been carried out, this possibility, which is exceptionally theoretical, does remain (and it was so stated in the Parliament's CNSD Findings). However, there is no factual evidence to suggest that actions of such a nature (illegal transportation of persons) took place. Therefore, an assertion that the aircraft linked with the United States Central Intelligence Agency was used to transport or to bring to the territory of the Republic of Lithuania (or to remove from it) individuals detained by the CIA, from the point of view of criminal law is a hypothesis which is not supported by factual evidence. Such a hypothesis is of the same value as a hypothesis that any other persons or goods of restricted circulation were transported. In the absence of factual information to support this hypothesis, it is not possible to bring criminal charges or to continue criminal proceedings in this respect. To reach the opposite conclusion would require specific information, which could allow a finding that a criminal offence has been committed. … As has been stated, no such information is available about any possibly criminal offences at the time of this procedural decision.

Accordingly, it must be concluded that the SSD officers, who sought and obtained uninterrupted access to the airports' territory where the [CIA] aircraft had landed, had acted in a lawful manner and had not abused their office or exceeded the limits of their authority and, consequently, did not commit the criminal offence stipulated in Article 228 of the Criminal Code [abuse of office].

Having concluded that there is no information about illegal transportation of persons on board aircraft linked to the United States Central Intelligence Agency, it should also be stated that there are no grounds to bring criminal charges pursuant to Article 291 (unlawful crossing of a State border) or Article 292 (unlawful carrying of persons over a State border).”

“In the course of the pre-trial investigation it was established that the SSD of the Republic of Lithuania, together with the CIA of the United States of America, implemented, in 2002, Project No. 1, referred to in the CNSD Findings, and in 2004 implemented Project No. 2, referred in the CNSD Findings. Both projects had been related to the reconstruction and outfitting of the buildings.

… The statute of limitations on any alleged abuse of office violations, which was the subject of the investigation, meant that no prosecution was possible for violations in relation to Project No. 1.

Nevertheless, regardless of this procedural impediment to the pre-trial investigation, it should also be noted that in the course thereof no unequivocal information was obtained to the effect that when implementing Project No. 1 the premises were outfitted specifically for the purpose of incarcerating detained persons. Factual information received about specific aspects of the premises (which allows the hypothesis that it was possible to keep a detained person there), when appraised together with the evidence that supports other (different) designations of the premises, and taking into account the fact that there is no information available that [any] detained persons had in fact been taken to or kept in those premises, does not provide a sufficient basis to charge a person with abuse of office and to pursue criminal proceedings.

As to Project No. 2, in the course of the pre-trial investigation no data was received to suggest that this project was used for keeping detained persons. To the contrary, the factual information and the testimony of all the witnesses support other purposes and use of the building, while the circumstances referred to in the [CNSD] Findings that ‘the layout of the building, its enclosed nature and protection of the perimeter as well as the sporadic presence of the SSD staff in the premises allowed for actions to be taken by officers of the partners without being monitored by the SSD, and also allowed them to use the infrastructure at their discretion’ do not create a basis for criminal charges and merely confirm that cooperation between the SSD and the CIA took place and that the building served other purposes. The real purpose of the building may not be revealed, as it constitutes a State secret.

It should be concluded that by the joint implementation of Project No. 1 and Project No. 2 by the SSD and the CIA a criminal offence under Article 228 of the Criminal Code [abuse of office] has not been committed.

[Moreover], even without restricting oneself merely to legal appraisal of the potentially criminal actions suggested at the beginning of the pre-trial investigation and its qualification in accordance with Article 288 of the Criminal Code, it should be noted that there are no grounds to bring criminal charges in accordance with Articles 100 (treatment of people prohibited by international law) or 146 (unlawful restriction of liberty), because, as has already been mentioned, during the pre-trial investigation no information was obtained about unlawful transportation of persons, their detention, arrest or other unlawful restriction of their liberty. …

This decision to terminate the pre-trial investigation also gives the answer to the statement by Reprieve, received by the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Lithuania on 20 September 2010. The statement presented a version of events according to which the officers of the United States Central Intelligence Agency between spring 2004 and September 2006 conveyed a detained person, [Abu Zubaydah], to the Republic of Lithuania, detained him in Lithuania and removed him from there. Reprieve did not provide any factual information to support this, no source of information has been provided or revealed, and in the course of the pre-trial investigation, as has been noted, no information was received about illegal transportation of anyone, including [Abu Zubaydah], into or out of the Republic of Lithuania by the United States Central Intelligence Agency.”

“As has been correctly stated in the [CNSD] Findings, the legal basis for the international cooperation of the SSD is stipulated in the Law on Intelligence, and there is no requirement in law for the directions (or tasks) relating to international cooperation to ‘be cleared’ at any political level (at the State Defence Council or the National Security and Defence Committee [of the Seimas]). The directions to be followed or tasks to be undertaken emerged from a general need for international cooperation and from direct contacts between the SSD and the special services of other countries. In the joint implementation of Project No. 1 and Project No. 2 by the SSD of the Republic of Lithuania together with the CIA of the United States of America, the leadership of the SSD at that time did not advise any high-level official of the State about the objectives and the content of these projects.

Having concluded that the law does not stipulate a duty to supply this information, and also taking into account that this information, because of its scope, may be and should be shared on a ‘need to know’ basis, it follows that in this part [of the investigation] too there is no evidence of a criminal offence or abuse of office. …

When summing up the information gathered in the course of the pre-trial investigation, it has to be stated that all necessary and sufficient measures and possibilities had been exhausted to collect information on any criminal offences committed. However, in the course of the pre-trial investigation no objective data was gathered which would confirm that there had been abuse of office (or another criminal offence) and the totality of the factual information is not sufficient to find that criminal offences were committed. Therefore, at the present time it is not possible to conclude that criminal offences were committed. On the contrary, the hypothetical suppositions which were the basis for the pre-trial investigation [on the charges of abuse of office, Article 228 of the Criminal Code] have not been confirmed, and have been ruled out of evidence. Article 3 § 1 (1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure stipulates that criminal proceedings may not be started, and if they have been started they must be terminated, where there is no indication of a criminal offence or a criminal misdemeanour. Therefore, this pre-trial investigation No. 01-2-00016-10 must be discontinued, because there is nothing to indicate that there has been a criminal offence or misdemeanour.

It has already been concluded that, to summarise the factual information contained in the material of the pre-trial investigation about the cooperation between the SSD and the United States Central Intelligence Agency in Project No. 1 and Project No. 2, no criminal offence has been committed as regards provision of information to the highest officials of the State. However, there is sufficient evidence to find that actions of the former chief executives of the SSD who had coordinated the cooperation between the SSD and the United States Central Intelligence Agency and of those who took part in that cooperation, Mečys Laurinkus, Arvydas Pocius and Dainius Dabašinskas, as well as actions of the chief executives of the SSD and its other staff who were in charge of the reconstruction of the premises (Project No. 1 and Project No. 2), who initiated this reconstruction and who carried out this reconstruction, may warrant action for disciplinary offences. However, the former chief executives of the SSD, Mečys Laurinkus, Arvydas Pocius and Dainius Dabašinskas, are no longer employed by the SSD and [thus] no disciplinary sanctions may be applied to them. In addition, in accordance with the Statute of the SSD …, no disciplinary sanction may be applied where more than one year has elapsed from the date of the offence. Therefore, even in cases where there is information which may indicate that a disciplinary offence has been committed, no decision can be made; this is stipulated by the Code of Criminal Procedure, Article 214 § 6. The matter must be transferred to other authorities for examination of a disciplinary offence after the pre-trial investigation is complete. …

Taking into account the fact that the material of the pre-trial investigation includes both a State secret and an official secret, all the material of the investigation, after the pre-trial investigation is complete, shall be passed on to the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Lithuania, the Department of Information Security and the Inspectorate of Operational Activities.”

“(1) indicate with reference to provisions of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania which crimes were investigated within pre-trial investigation No. 01-2-00016-10;

(2) indicate chronologically all the procedural actions taken during the pre-trial investigation;

(3) state the findings of the investigation with respect to each crime; and

(4) state on what basis the investigation was closed in respect of each of the crimes.”

“Compelling new information that has now come to light about the landings of CIA connected planes in Lithuania makes a rigorous and wide-ranging investigation all the more urgent. It has become obvious that previous efforts to chart the extent of the CIA,s rendition operations in Europe have only revealed the tip of the iceberg.

As you will be aware, we have recently presented some new data, connecting Morocco and Lithuania, in Amnesty International's report ‘Unlock the Truth in Lithuania: Investigate Secret Prisons Now’ (published 29 Sept. 2011). The data concerns a Boeing 727, N724CL, which flew from Morocco to Vilnius via Amman, Jordan, arriving in Vilnius International Airport on the evening of 17 February 2005. It stayed briefly in Vilnius before departing for Iceland, and then returned through Canada to the USA. The flight coincides with that of another plane, N787WH, which landed in Palanga on 18 February 2005, coming from Bucharest. We have adduced that the timing of these flights matches the timing associated, in public source accounts, with the transfer of Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn (Abu Zubaydah) from secret detention in Morocco to secret detention in Lithuania.

With this letter we enclose, for your attention, two documents relating to the arrival of N724CL in Vilnius: a disclosure from the Lithuanian Civil Aviation Authority, dated 20 June 2011, and a disclosure from Vilnius Airport, received on 19 Sept. 2011. We note that there are some discrepancies in the times recorded on the documents, but that aside from these they are in agreement. We have prepared an additional dossier of confidential material with relation to this flight, which we will forward to you on receipt of an undertaking that you will maintain its strict confidentiality.

…

We also note that the route of the other plane, N787WH between 14 and 19 February 2005, although partly disclosed in the course of the Seimas inquiry of 2009, is yet to be fully accounted for. In particular, it has not been disclosed where this plane stopped before Bucharest.

…

We are continuing actively to investigate these and other flights, and we believe that further new information will come to light in the near future. It is clear, however, that the full truth concerning these flights will not properly emerge until all responsible bodies in all connected countries search diligently through the material available to them.”

“The decision of 14 January 2011 is annulled and the pre-trial investigation No. 01-2-00016-10 is reopened.

In accordance with Article 217 § 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (hereinafter referred to as CCP), a pre-trial investigation might be reopened where essential circumstances, which are relevant for a fair resolution of a case and which were not known at the moment of discontinuation of a pre-trial emerge.

US Senate published a redacted report on activities of CIA prisons on 9 December 2014. Though the report does not refer to particular countries where secret CIA detention centres were present, it refers to the ‘Violet’ centre where the citizen of Saudi Arabia Mustafa al-Hawsawi was detained.

In regard to the alleged illegal transportation of this person to Lithuania on 13 February 2014 the Prosecutor General's Office opened the pre-trial investigation [under Article 292 the CC], which to date is still in progress.

The data contained in the published Report of US Senate of 9 December 2014 to be considered as a ground to reopen the discontinued pre-trial investigation No. 01-2-00016-10 within the meaning of Article 217 § 2 of the CCP.

Taking into consideration the content of the information, some coincidences of this information with the data provided in the conclusions of the parliamentary inquiry carried out by the CNSD on the alleged transportation and confinement of persons detained by CIA in the territory of the Republic of Lithuania and with the subject-matter of the pre-trial investigation No. 01-2-200016-10, it is necessary to re-evaluate importance of the newly emerged data by procedural means in order achieve the purpose of the criminal process as it is indicated under Article 1 § 1 of CCP.”

“Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:

(1) Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict, as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.

(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:xxxxxx

(3) Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.

…”

“The present Convention shall apply to the persons referred to in Article 4 from the time they fall into the power of the enemy and until their final release and repatriation.

Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.”

“Art 13. Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated. Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited, and will be regarded as a serious breach of the present Convention. In particular, no prisoner of war may be subjected to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are not justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the prisoner concerned and carried out in his interest.

Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.

Measures of reprisal against prisoners of war are prohibited.”

“The Detaining Power may subject prisoners of war to internment. It may impose on them the obligation of not leaving, beyond certain limits, the camp where they are interned, or if the said camp is fenced in, of not going outside its perimeter. Subject to the provisions of the present Convention relative to penal and disciplinary sanctions, prisoners of war may not be held in close confinement except where necessary to safeguard their health and then only during the continuation of the circumstances which make such confinement necessary.”

“In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

(b) taking of hostages;

(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;

(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”

“Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.

Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it. Nationals of a neutral State who find themselves in the territory of a belligerent State, and nationals of a co-belligerent State, shall not be regarded as protected persons while the State of which they are nationals has normal diplomatic representation in the State in whose hands they are. …”

“All persons detained in this context are entitled to the protection of international human rights law and humanitarian law, in particular the relevant provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The legal status of the detainees and their entitlement to prisoner-of-war (POW) status, if disputed, must be determined by a competent tribunal, in accordance with the provisions of Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention. All detainees must at all times be treated humanely, consistent with the provisions of the ICCPR and the Third Geneva Convention.”

“… the fight against terrorism launched by the United States after September 11 did not include a vigorous affirmation of those freedoms. Instead, the country has witnessed a persistent, deliberate, and unwarranted erosion of basic rights … Most of those directly affected have been non-U.S. citizens … the Department of Justice has subjected them to arbitrary detention, violated due process in legal proceedings against them, and run roughshod over the presumption of innocence.”

“The Convention against Torture, which the United States has ratified, specifically prohibits torture and mistreatment, as well as sending detainees to countries where such practices are likely to occur.”

“Many ‘special interest’ detainees have been held in solitary confinement or housed with convicted prisoners, with restrictions on communications with family, friends and lawyers, and have had inadequate access to facilities for exercise and for religious observance, including facilities to comply with dietary requirements. Some told human rights groups they were denied medical treatment and beaten by guards and inmates.”

“A number of suspected members of al-Qaeda reported to have been taken into US custody continued to be held in undisclosed locations. The US government failed to provide clarification on the whereabouts and legal status of those detained, or to provide them with their rights under international law, including the right to inform their families of their place of detention and the right of access to outside representatives. An unknown number of detainees originally in US custody were allegedly transferred to third countries, a situation which raised concern that the suspects might face torture during interrogation.”

“Detainees have been held incommunicado in US bases in Afghanistan. Allegations of ill-treatment have emerged. Others have been held incommunicado in US custody in undisclosed locations elsewhere in the world, and the US has also instigated or involved itself in ‘irregular renditions’, US parlance for informal transfers of detainees between the USA and other countries which bypass extradition or other human rights protections.”

“Amnesty International is concerned that the detention of suspects in undisclosed locations without access to legal representation or to family members and the ‘rendering’ of suspects between countries without any formal human rights protections is in violation of the right to a fair trial, places them at risk of ill-treatment and undermines the rule of law.”

“Beyond Guantánamo, the ICRC is increasingly concerned about the fate of an unknown number of people captured as part of the so-called global war on terror and held in undisclosed locations. Mr Kellenberger echoed previous official requests from the ICRC for information on these detainees and for eventual access to them, as an important humanitarian priority and as a logical continuation of the organization's current detention work in Guantánamo and Afghanistan.”

“Human Rights Watch has conducted independent research on the existence of secret detention locations that corroborates the Washington Post's allegations that there were detention facilities in Eastern Europe.

Specifically, we have collected information that CIA airplanes travelling from Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004 made direct flights to remote airfields in Poland and Romania. Human Rights Watch has viewed flight records showing that a Boeing 737, registration number N313P – a plane that the CIA used to move several prisoners to and from Europe, Afghanistan, and the Middle East in 2003 and 2004 – landed in Poland and Romania on direct flights from Afghanistan on two occasions in 2003 and 2004. Human Rights Watch has independently confirmed several parts of the flight records, and supplemented the records with independent research.

According to the records, the N313P plane flew from Kabul to northeastern Poland on September 22, 2003, specifically, to Szymany airport, near the Polish town of Szczytno, in Warmia-Mazuria province. Human Rights Watch has obtained information that several detainees who had been held secretly in Afghanistan in 2003 were transferred out of the country in September and October 2003. The Polish intelligence service maintains a large training facility and grounds near the Szymany airport. …

On Friday, the Associated Press quoted Szymany airport officials in Poland confirming that a Boeing passenger plane landed at the airport at around midnight on the night of September 22, 2003. The officials stated that the plane spent an hour on the ground and took aboard five passengers with U.S. passports. …

Further investigation is needed to determine the possible involvement of Poland and Romania in the extremely serious activities described in The Washington Post article. Arbitrary incommunicado detention is illegal under international law. It often acts as a foundation for torture and mistreatment of detainees. U.S. government officials, speaking anonymously to journalists in the past, have admitted that some secretly held detainees have been subjected to torture and other mistreatment, including waterboarding (immersing or smothering a detainee with water until he believes he is about to drown). Countries that allow secret detention programs to operate on their territory are complicit in the human rights abuses committed against detainees.

Human Rights Watch knows the names of 23 high-level suspects being held secretly by U.S. personnel at undisclosed locations. An unknown number of other detainees may be held at the request of the U.S. government in locations in the Middle East and Asia. U.S. intelligence officials, speaking anonymously to journalists, have stated that approximately 100 persons are being held in secret detention abroad by the United States.

Human Rights Watch emphasizes that there is no doubt that secret detention facilities operated by the United States exist. The Bush Administration has cited, in speeches and in public documents, arrests of several terrorist suspects now held in unknown locations. Some of the detainees cited by the administration include: Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian arrested in Pakistan in March 2002; … Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (also known as Abu Bilal al-Makki), arrested in United Arab Emirates in November 2002 … .

Human Rights Watch urges the United Nations and relevant European Union bodies to launch investigations to determine which countries have been or are being used by the United States for transiting and detaining incommunicado prisoners. The U.S. Congress should also convene hearings on the allegations and demand that the Bush administration account for secret detainees, explain the legal basis for their continued detention, and make arrangements to screen detainees to determine their legal status under domestic and international law. We welcome the decision by the Legal Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to examine the existence of U.S.-run detention centers in Council of Europe member states. We also urge the European Union, including the EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, to further investigate allegations and publish its findings.”

“The following is a list of persons believed to be in U.S. custody as ‘ghost detainees’ – detainees who are not given any legal rights or access to counsel, and who are likely not reported to or seen by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The list is compiled from media reports, public statements by government officials, and from other information obtained by Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch does not consider this list to be complete: there are likely other “ghost detainees” held by the United States.

Under international law, enforced disappearances occur when persons are deprived of their liberty, and the detaining authority refuses to disclose their fate or whereabouts, or refuses to acknowledge their detention, which places the detainees outside the protection of the law. International treaties ratified by the United States prohibit incommunicado detention of persons in secret locations.

Many of the detainees listed below are suspected of involvement in serious crimes, including the September 11, 2001 attacks; the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; and the 2002 bombing at two nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia. … Yet none on this list has been arraigned or criminally charged, and government officials, speaking anonymously to journalists, have suggested that some detainees have been tortured or seriously mistreated in custody.

The current location of these prisoners is unknown.

List, as of December 1, 2005:

…

4. Abu Zubaydah (also known as Zain al-Abidin Muhammad Husain). Reportedly arrested in March 2002, Faisalabad, Pakistan. Palestinian (born in Saudi Arabia), suspected senior al-Qaeda operational planner. Listed as captured in ‘George W. Bush: Record of Achievement. Waging and Winning the War on Terror’, available on the White House website. Previously listed as ‘disappeared’ by Human Rights Watch.

…

9. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (or Abdulrahim Mohammad Abda al-Nasheri, aka Abu Bilal al-Makki or Mullah Ahmad Belal). Reportedly arrested in November 2002, United Arab Emirates. Saudi or Yemeni, suspected al-Qaeda chief of operations in the Persian Gulf, and suspected planner of the USS Cole bombing, and attack on the French oil tanker, Limburg. Listed in ‘George W. Bush: Record of Achievement, Waging and Winning the War on Terror’, available on the White House website. Previously listed as ‘disappeared’ by Human Rights Watch. …

…

11. Mustafa al-Hawsawi (aka al-Hisawi)

Reportedly arrested on March 1, 2003 (together with Khaled Sheikh Mohammad), Pakistan. Saudi, suspected al-Qaeda financier. Previously listed as “disappeared” by Human Rights Watch.

12. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed

Reportedly arrested on March 1, 2003, Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

Kuwaiti (Pakistani parents), suspected al-Qaeda, alleged to have “masterminded” Sept. 11 attacks, killing of Daniel Pearl, and USS Cole attack in 2000. Listed in “George W. Bush: Record of Achievement, Waging and Winning the War on Terror,” available on the White House website. Previously listed as “disappeared” by Human Rights Watch. …”

“Since Sept. 11, the U.S. government has secretly transported dozens of people suspected of links to terrorists to countries other than the United States, bypassing extradition procedures and legal formalities, according to Western diplomats and intelligence sources. The suspects have been taken to countries, including Egypt and Jordan, whose intelligence services have close ties to the CIA and where they can be subjected to interrogation tactics Including torture and threats to families - that are illegal in the United States, the sources said. In some cases, U.S. intelligence agents remain closely involved in the interrogation, the sources said.

After September 11, these sorts of movements have been occurring all the time', a US diplomat told the Washington Post. ‘It allows us to get information from terrorists in a way we can't do on US soil’. …

U.S. involvement in seizing terrorism suspects in third countries and shipping them with few or no legal proceedings to the United States or other countries - known as ‘rendition’ - is not new. In recent years, U.S. agents, working with Egyptian intelligence and local authorities in Africa, Central Asia and the Balkans, have sent dozens of suspected Islamic extremists to Cairo or taken them to the United States, according to U.S. officials, Egyptian lawyers and human rights groups. …”

“The US has been secretly sending prisoners suspected of al-Qaida connections to countries where torture during interrogation is legal, according to US diplomatic and intelligence sources. Prisoners moved to such countries as Egypt and Jordan can be subjected to torture and threats to their families to extract information sought by the US in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

The normal extradition procedures have been bypassed in the transportation of dozens of prisoners suspected of terrorist connections, according to a report in the Washington Post. The suspects have been taken to countries where the CIA has close ties with the local intelligence services and where torture is permitted.

According to the report, US intelligence agents have been involved in a number of interrogations. A CIA spokesman yesterday said the agency had no comment on the allegations. A state department spokesman said the US had been ‘working very closely with other countries’ – it's a global fight against terrorism’. …

The seizing of suspects and taking them to a third country without due process of law is known as ‘rendition’. The reason for sending a suspect to a third country rather than to the US, according to the diplomats, is an attempt to avoid highly publicised cases that could lead to a further backlash from Islamist extremists. …

The US has been criticised by some of its European allies over the detention of prisoners at Camp X-Ray in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. After the Pentagon released pictures of blindfolded prisoners kneeling on the ground, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was forced to defend the conditions in which they were being held. Unsuccessful attempts have been made by civil rights lawyers based in Los Angeles to have the Camp X-Ray prisoners either charged in US courts or treated as prisoners of war. The US administration has resisted such moves, arguing that those detained, both Taliban fighters and members of al-Qaida, were not entitled to be regarded as prisoners of war because they were terrorists rather than soldiers and were not part of a recognised, uniformed army.”

“US officials have been discussing whether Zubaydah should be sent to countries, including Egypt or Jordan, where much more aggressive interrogation techniques are permitted. But such a move would directly raise a question of torture … Officials have also discussed sending Zubaydah to Guantànamo Bay or to a military ship at sea. Sources say it's imperative to keep him isolated from other detainees as part of psychological warfare, and even more aggressive tools may be used.”

“Zubaydah is in US custody, but it's unclear whether he remains in Pakistan, is among 20 al Qaeda suspects to be sent to the US naval station at Guantànamo Bay, Cuba, or will be transported to a separate location.”

“US officials would not say where he was being held. But they did say he was not expected in the United States any time soon. He could eventually be held in Afghanistan, aboard a Navy ship, at the US base in Guantànamo Bay, Cuba, or transferred to a third country.”

“a brass-knuckled quest for information, often in concert with allies of dubious human rights reputation; in which the traditional lines between right and wrong, legal and inhumane, are evolving and blurred. …

‘If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time; you probably aren't doing your job,’ said one official who has supervised the capture and transfer of accused terrorists.”

“there were a number of secret detention centers overseas where US due process does not apply … where the CIA undertakes or manages the interrogation of suspected terrorists … off-limits to outsiders and often even to other government agencies. In addition to Bagram and Diego Garcia, the CIA has other detention centres overseas and often uses the facilities of foreign intelligence services”.

“The takedown teams often ‘package’ prisoners for transport, fitting them with hoods and gags, and binding them to stretchers with duct tape.”

“The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.

The existence and locations of the facilities – referred to as ‘black sites’ in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents – are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

…

Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay.

The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.

…

It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.

Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as ‘waterboarding’, in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.

…

The contours of the CIA's detention program have emerged in bits and pieces over the past two years. Parliaments in Canada, Italy, France, Sweden and the Netherlands have opened inquiries into alleged CIA operations that secretly captured their citizens or legal residents and transferred them to the agency's prisons.

More than 100 suspected terrorists have been sent by the CIA into the covert system, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and foreign sources. This figure, a rough estimate based on information from sources who said their knowledge of the numbers was incomplete, does not include prisoners picked up in Iraq.

The detainees break down roughly into two classes, the sources said.

About 30 are considered major terrorism suspects and have been held under the highest level of secrecy at black sites financed by the CIA and managed by agency personnel, including those in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to current and former intelligence officers and two other U.S. government officials. Two locations in this category – in Thailand and on the grounds of the military prison at Guantánamo Bay – were closed in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

A second tier – which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees – is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as “rendition.” While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.

…

The top 30 al Qaeda prisoners exist in complete isolation from the outside world. Kept in dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being, said current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials.

…

The Eastern European countries that the CIA has persuaded to hide al Qaeda captives are democracies that have embraced the rule of law and individual rights after decades of Soviet domination. Each has been trying to cleanse its intelligence services of operatives who have worked on behalf of others – mainly Russia and organized crime.

…

By mid-2002, the CIA had worked out secret black-site deals with two countries, including Thailand and one Eastern European nation, current and former officials said. An estimated $100 million was tucked inside the classified annex of the first supplemental Afghanistan appropriation. …”

“Two CIA secret prisons were operating in Eastern Europe until last month when they were shut down following Human Rights Watch reports of their existence in Poland and Romania.

Current and former CIA officers speaking to ABC News on the condition of confidentiality say the United States scrambled to get all the suspects off European soil before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived there today. The officers say 11 top al Qaeda suspects have now been moved to a new CIA facility in the North African desert.

CIA officials asked ABC News not to name the specific countries where the prisons were located, citing security concerns.

The CIA declines to comment, but current and former intelligence officials tell ABC News that 11 top al Qaeda figures were all held at one point on a former Soviet air base in one Eastern European country. Several of them were later moved to a second Eastern European country.

All but one of these 11 high-value al Qaeda prisoners were subjected to the harshest interrogation techniques in the CIA's secret arsenal, the so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ authorized for use by about 14 CIA officers and first reported by ABC News on Nov. 18.

Rice today avoided directly answering the question of secret prisons in remarks made on her departure for Europe, where the issue of secret prisons and secret flights has caused a furor.

Without mentioning any country by name, Rice acknowledged special handling for certain terrorists. ‘The captured terrorists of the 21st century do not fit easily into traditional systems of criminal or military justice, which were designed for different needs. We have had to adapt’, Rice said.

The CIA has used a small fleet of private jets to move top al Qaeda suspects from Afghanistan and the Middle East to Eastern Europe, where Human Rights Watch has identified Poland and Romania as the countries that housed secret sites.

But Polish Defense Minister Radosław Sikorski told ABC Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross today: ‘My president has said there is no truth in these reports.’

Ross asked: ‘Do you know otherwise, sir, are you aware of these sites being shut down in the last few weeks, operating on a base under your direct control?’ Sikorski answered, ‘I think this is as much as I can tell you about this’.

In Romania, where the secret prison was possibly at a military base visited last year by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the new Romanian prime minister said today there is no evidence of a CIA site but that he will investigate.

Sources tell ABC that the CIA's secret prisons have existed since March 2002 when one was established in Thailand to house the first important al Qaeda target captured. Sources tell ABC that the approval for another secret prison was granted last year by a North African nation.

Sources tell ABC News that the CIA has a related system of secretly returning other prisoners to their home country when they have outlived their usefulness to the United States.

These same sources also tell ABC News that U.S. intelligence also ships some ‘unlawful combatants’ to countries that use interrogation techniques harsher than any authorized for use by U.S. intelligence officers. They say that Jordan, Syria, Morocco and Egypt were among the nations used in order to extract confessions quickly using techniques harsher than those authorized for use by U.S. intelligence officers. These prisoners were not necessarily citizens of those nations.

According to sources directly involved in setting up the CIA secret prison system, it began with the capture of Abu [Zubaydah] in Pakistan. After treatment there for gunshot wounds, he was whisked by the CIA to Thailand where he was housed in a small, disused warehouse on an active airbase. There, his cell was kept under 24-hour closed circuit TV surveillance and his life-threatening wounds were tended to by a CIA doctor specially sent from Langley headquarters to assure Abu Zubaydah was given proper care, sources said. Once healthy, he was slapped, grabbed, made to stand long hours in a cold cell, and finally handcuffed and strapped feet up to a water board until after 0.31 seconds he begged for mercy and began to cooperate. …”

“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 Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al Shihb and Abu Zubaydah, to Guantánamo, 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 Guantánamo 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.”

“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.

‘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 Grybauskaitė 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 Antaviliai, 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 who 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.

Lithuanian Prison One of Many Around Europe, Officials Said

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 Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, Ramzi bin al Shihb and Abu Zubaydah, to Guantánamo.

In August 2009, after ABC News reported the existence of the secret prison outside Vilnius, Lithuanian president Grybauskaitė called for an investigation. If this is true’, Grybauskaitė 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’.”

“ANTAVILIAI, LITHUANIA -- Residents of this village were mystified five years ago when tight-lipped American construction workers suddenly appeared at a mothballed riding stable here and built a large, two-story building without windows, ringed by a metal fence and security cameras.

Today, a Lithuanian parliamentary committee is investigating whether the CIA operated a secret prison for terrorism suspects on the plot of land at the edge of a thick forest for more than a year, from 2004 until late 2005.

Lithuanian land registry documents reviewed by The Washington Post show the property was bought in March 2004 by Elite LLC, an unincorporated U.S. firm registered in the District.

Records in Lithuania and Washington do not reveal the names of individual officers for Elite but identify its sole shareholder as Star Finance Group and Holdings Inc., a Panamanian corporation. There is no record of Elite owning other property in Lithuania.

The company, which has since had its registration revoked by D.C. authorities, in turn sold the property to the Lithuanian government in 2007, two years after the existence of the CIA's overseas network of secret prisons known as black sites -- including some in Eastern Europe -- was first revealed by The Washington Post.

At the time, The Post withheld the names of Eastern European countries involved in the covert program at the request of White House officials, who argued that disclosure could subject those countries to retaliation from al-Qaeda.

The Lithuanian government has not publicly confirmed whether the property was one of the CIA's black sites.

The site in Antaviliai, about 15 miles outside the capital, Vilnius, is now used by Lithuania's State Security Department as a training center. Department officials have declined to comment on the circumstances under which it acquired the property or whether it was used by the CIA. A CIA spokesman also declined to comment.

Domas Grigaliūnas, a former counterintelligence officer with the Lithuanian military, said it was widely known among the Lithuanian secret services that U.S. intelligence partners had built the site, although its original purpose was kept highly classified.’

‘It just popped up out of nowhere’, he said in an interview. ‘Everybody knew this was handed to us by the Americans’.

Grigaliūnas said he was asked in 2004 by the deputy director of Lithuanian military intelligence to develop plans to help a ‘foreign partner’ that was interested in bringing individuals to Lithuania and concealing their whereabouts as part of a covert operation.

He said he made some recommendations but was never told the identity of the foreign partner or whether the operation was carried out. Since then, however, he said he has become convinced that the program involved the CIA's detention centers for terrorism suspects.

‘I have no documents to prove it, and I never worked in any prisons, but I believe they existed here’, he said in an interview.

Villagers who live in a crumbling apartment complex about 100 yards from the site recalled how English-speaking construction workers descended on a small, shuttered horse-riding academy there in 2004. They said the workers refused to answer questions about what they were doing but brought shipping containers filled with building materials. The workers also excavated large amounts of soil; with all the digging, residents said they assumed that part of the new facility was underground.

‘If you got close, they would tell us, in English, to go away’, said a retired man who lives nearby and spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fears of retribution. ‘We were really wondering what they were up to. We even wondered if it was a Mafia drug operation or something’.

Members of the Lithuanian Parliament's National Security and Defense Committee visited the site recently as part of their investigation into whether the CIA detained terrorism suspects on Lithuanian territory.

The probe was authorized last month by the Parliament after ABC News reported in August that two CIA-chartered flights had brought al-Qaeda prisoners from Afghanistan to Vilnius in 2004 and 2005.

Lithuanian government officials denied the ABC News report at the time and said there was no documentation that the flights ever landed in their country. But the Parliament decided to take another look after Lithuania's newly elected president, Dalia Grybauskaitė, said in October that she had ‘indirect suspicions’ that reports of the CIA prison were accurate and urged a more comprehensive investigation.

Arvydas Anušauskas, chairman of the National Security and Defense Committee, declined to comment on its findings. In response to written questions submitted by The Post, he said the committee would interview ‘all the persons who might have known or could have known the information in question’.

‘The committee has all rights and tools to ultimately clarify the situation and to either confirm or deny any allegations of the transportation of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States and their detention on the territory of the Republic of Lithuania’, he said.

Lithuanian officials have also been pressed to investigate by the Council of Europe, an official human rights watchdog, which has conducted its own probe of CIA operations on the continent. Council officials said they had received confidential records confirming that CIA-chartered planes had flown from Afghanistan to Vilnius in 2004 and 2005.

Thomas Hammarberg, the council's commissioner for human rights, said in a telephone interview that flight logs had been doctored to indicate that the planes had touched down in neighboring countries, including Finland and Poland.

Hammarberg visited Vilnius last month and said he personally urged Lithuanian officials to take the issue more seriously. ‘I told them it is quite likely that further information might leak from the United States, so they should hurry up and do their own investigation now’, he said.”

“Vilnius - Staunch US ally Lithuania may have hosted two ‘war on terror’ lock-ups used by American agents to interrogate suspected Al-Qaeda members, the head of an inquiry commission said Tuesday.

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

Ex-president Valdas Adamkus, who was in power for much of the period that the sites are believed to have operated, rejected the findings. ‘I am certain this never happened and nobody proved me wrong’, Adamkus told the Baltic News Service.

Lithuania's parliament called for an investigation after the US 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 US 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’, Anušauskas 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 US-registered firm Elite LLC - purportedly a CIA front.

According to information obtained by AFP, the US 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 [i.e. the SSD], enabled our partners to carry out activities without VSD control and to use the place however they liked’, said Anušauskas, 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.

Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, in government since winning an election in October 2008, slammed the VSD. ‘The biggest concern comes from the fact that a few agents, without consulting the head of state, took a decision that breached the law’, he told reporters, adding that ‘the VSD became a state within a state’.

Defence Minister Rasa Juknevičienė said she had previously thought the claims were ‘nonsense’. ‘I could not say this today’, she told reporters.

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, Anušauskas 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.

Anušauskas said the probe concluded that Lithuania's heads of state were ‘not informed, or only informed superficially’ about the sites.

Adamkus was in power from 1998 to 2003 and again from 2004 to 2009. In between, Rolandas Paksas served a year in office before being impeached in a graft case.

Earlier this month, Paksas said that in 2003 he declined a VSD request to transfer suspects to Lithuania. The VSD boss at the time, Mečys Laurinkus, said this month that the request had been hypothetical.”

“The Romanian prison was part of a network of so-called black sites that the CIA operated and controlled overseas in Thailand, Lithuania and Poland. All the prisons were closed by May 2006, and the CIA's detention and interrogation programme ended in 2009.

Unlike the CIA's facility in Lithuania's countryside or the one hidden in a Polish military installation, the CIA's prison in Romania was not in a remote location. It was hidden in plain sight, a couple blocks off a major boulevard on a street lined with trees and homes, along busy train tracks.

…

The Romanian and Lithuanian sites were eventually closed in the first half of 2006 before CIA Director Porter Goss left the job. Some of the detainees were taken to Kabul, where the CIA could legally hold them before they were sent to Guantánamo. Others were sent back to their native countries.”

“3. Control mechanisms regarding transiting aircraft

…

3.2. State aircraft

51. Several States explain in detail their national legislation stipulating clearance requirements for foreign State aircraft (Denmark, Croatia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania and Portugal). From the replies given, it appears that foreign governments are generally not required to provide information on the identity and status of persons on board. Once an authorisation is granted, the State aircraft benefits from immunity and is not subject to controls. … No country mentions the use of specific procedures or clauses designed to ensure effective guarantees against serious human rights violations.

52. Latvia (in 2005) and Lithuania (in 2004) enacted comprehensive regulations prescribing the procedure of granting permits for foreign State aircraft. Requests for permission must be made in advance. They must indicate, among other things, the number of passengers (but not their identity, except for VIPs), the purpose of the flight, the flight route and the airports used. …

53. Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania and Slovenia indicate that any transport of detained persons through their respective territories requires prior consent by the Ministry of Justice or the Prosecutor General's Office. However, according to the replies of Lithuania and Slovenia, such consent would not be required for transportation by air without a scheduled landing.

54. In contrast to the replies to my first letter (see paragraph 55 of SG/Inf(2006)5), several countries now refer to “general” or “blanket” overflight clearances or rights. Referring to NATO regulations, Latvia and Lithuania declare that NATO has the right to carry out the control and defence of their respective airspace. Military aircraft of NATO member States are accordingly exempt from existing control mechanisms. … Such arrangements appear to be based on mutual trust. No information is provided about possible safeguards against abuse.

55. Lithuania indicates that it granted permanent permissions (valid each time for one year) to use its airspace to US State aircraft from 2001 to 2006. …”

“Total number of stopovers of CIA aircraft in Lithuanian airports: 1

Total number of Lithuanian airports involved

1 airport involved

List of Lithuanian airports

Vilnius (1).

Total number of CIA aircraft having stopped over in Lithuania

1 different CIA aircraft.

List of CIA aircraft (Registration Numbers) having stopped over in Lithuania:

N8213G.

Total number of stopovers in Lithuania for each CIA aircraft and relevant details of specific aircraft: N8213G: 1 stopover in Lithuania”

In its general part the resolution referred, among other things, to an “informal transatlantic meeting” that had taken place on 7 December 2005 and involved foreign ministers of the of European Union (“EU”) and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (“NATO”) and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The relevant section read as follows:

“The European Parliament,

…

L. whereas the Temporary Committee has obtained, from a confidential source, records of the informal transatlantic meeting of European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) foreign ministers, including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, of 7 December 2005, confirming that Member States had knowledge of the programme of extraordinary rendition, while all official interlocutors of the Temporary Committee provided inaccurate information on this matter,”

“9. Deplores the fact that the governments of European countries did not feel the need to ask the US Government for clarifications regarding the existence of secret prisons outside US territory;

…

13. Denounces the lack of cooperation of many Member States, and of the Council of the European Union towards the Temporary Committee; stresses that the behaviour of Member States, and in particular the Council and its Presidencies, has fallen far below the standard that Parliament is entitled to expect;

…

39. Condemns extraordinary rendition as an illegal instrument used by the United States in the fight against terrorism; condemns, further, the condoning and concealing of the practice, on several occasions, by the secret services and governmental authorities of certain European countries;

…

43. Regrets that European countries have been relinquishing their control over their airspace and airports by turning a blind eye or admitting flights operated by the CIA which, on some occasions, were being used for extraordinary rendition or the illegal transportation of detainees, and recalls their positive obligations arising out of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, as reiterated by the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission);

44. Is concerned, in particular, that the blanket overflight and stopover clearances granted to CIA-operated aircraft may have been based, inter alia, on the NATO agreement on the implementation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, adopted on 4 October 2001;

…

48. Confirms, in view of the additional information received during the second part of the proceedings of the Temporary Committee, that it is unlikely that certain European governments were unaware of the extraordinary rendition activities taking place in their territory;

…”

“[French – orginal]

Hélène Flautre décrit une sorte de « bâtiment dans le bâtiment », selon un principe de double coque, des salles plus basses de plafond que d'autres, des marches qui pourraient correspondre à celle que d'anciens prisonniers de la CIA se souviennent d'avoir empruntées, alors que leurs yeux étaient bandés. Le bâtiment est équipé d'un énorme appareil de conditionnement d'air et d'un système de pompage d'eau, dont on ne comprend pas bien l'utilité. …

[English translation]

Hélène Flautre described a kind of ‘building within the building’, a double-shell structure, some rooms with lower ceilings than the others and steps which could correspond to those which former prisoners remember taking when blindfolded. The building has an enormous air-conditioning system and a water-pumping system, the purpose of which is not evident.”

“The European Parliament,

…

T. whereas the Lithuanian authorities have endeavoured to shed light on Lithuania's involvement in the CIA programme by carrying out parliamentary and judicial inquiries; whereas the parliamentary investigation by the Seimas Committee on National Security and Defence concerning the alleged transportation and confinement of persons detained by the CIA on Lithuanian territory established that five CIA-related aircraft landed in Lithuania between 2003 and 2005 and that two tailored facilities suitable for holding detainees in Lithuania (Projects Nos. 1 and 2) were prepared at the request of the CIA; whereas the LIBE delegation thanks the Lithuanian authorities for welcoming Members of the European Parliament to Vilnius in April 2012 and allowing the LIBE delegation access to Project No. 2; whereas the layout of the buildings and installations inside appears to be compatible with the detention of prisoners; whereas many questions relating to CIA operations in Lithuania remain open despite the subsequent judicial investigation conducted in 2010 and closed in January 2011; whereas the Lithuanian authorities have expressed their readiness to re-launch investigations if other new information were to come to light, and whereas the Prosecutor's Office has offered to provide further information on the criminal investigation in response to a written request from Parliament; …”

“[The European Parliament],

…

“14. Notes that the parliamentary and judicial inquiries that took place in Lithuania between 2009 and 2011 were not able to demonstrate that detainees had been secretly held in Lithuania; calls on the Lithuanian authorities to honour their commitment to reopen the criminal investigation into Lithuania's involvement in the CIA programme if new information should come to light, in view of new evidence provided by the Eurocontrol data showing that plane N787WH, alleged to have transported Abu Zubaydah, did stop in Morocco on 18 February 2005 on its way to Romania and Lithuania; notes that analysis of the Eurocontrol data also reveals new information through flight plans connecting Romania to Lithuania, via a plane switch in Tirana, Albania, on 5 October 2005, and Lithuania to Afghanistan, via Cairo, Egypt, on 26 March 2006; considers it essential that the scope of new investigations cover, beyond abuses of power by state officials, possible unlawful detention and ill-treatment of persons on Lithuanian territory; encourages the Prosecutor General's Office to substantiate with documentation the affirmations made during the LIBE delegation's visit that the ‘categorical’ conclusions of the judicial inquiry are that ‘no detainees have been detained in the facilities of Projects No. 1 and No. 2 in Lithuania; …”

“The European Parliament,

…

F. whereas the Lithuanian authorities have reiterated their commitment to reopening the criminal investigation into Lithuania's involvement in the CIA programme if new elements emerge, but still have not done so; whereas in their observations to the ECtHR in the case of Abu Zubaydah, the Lithuanian authorities demonstrated critical shortcomings in their investigations and a failure to grasp the meaning of the new information; whereas Lithuania holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2013; whereas a complaint was submitted on 13 September 2013 to the Lithuanian Prosecutor General, calling for an investigation into allegations that Mustafa al-Hawsawi, who is currently facing trial by military commission at Guantánamo Bay, had been illegally transferred to, and secretly detained and tortured in, Lithuania as part of a CIA-led programme; …”

“[The European Parliament,]

…

4. Urges Lithuania to reopen its criminal investigation into CIA secret detention facilities and to conduct a rigorous investigation considering all the factual evidence that has been disclosed, notably regarding the ECtHR case of Abu Zubaydah v Lithuania; asks Lithuania to allow the investigators to carry out a comprehensive examination of the renditions flight network and contact persons publicly known to have organised or participated in the flights in question; asks the Lithuanian authorities to carry out forensic examination of the prison site and analysis of phone records; urges them to cooperate fully with the ECtHR in the cases of Abu Zubaydah v Lithuania and HRMI v Lithuania; calls on Lithuania, in the context of reopening the criminal investigation, to consider applications for status/participation in the investigation from other possible victims; urges Lithuania to respond in full to requests for information from other EU Member States, in particular the request for information from the Finnish Ombudsman regarding a flight or flights that could link Finland and Lithuania to a possible rendition route; urges the Lithuanian Prosecutor General to carry out a criminal investigation into Mustafa al-Hawsawi's complaint; …”

“[The European Parliament,]

11. Urges Lithuania, Romania and Poland to conduct, as a matter of urgency, transparent, thorough and effective criminal investigations into CIA secret detention facilities on their respective territories, having taken into full consideration all the factual evidence that has been disclosed, to bring perpetrators of human rights violations to justice, to allow the investigators to carry out a comprehensive examination of the renditions flight network and of contact people publicly known to have organised or participated in the flights in question, to carry out forensic examination of the prison sites and the provision of medical care to detainees held at these sites, to analyse phone records and transfers of money, to consider applications for status/participation in the investigation from possible victims, and to ensure that all relevant crimes are considered, including in connection with the transfer of detainees, or to release the conclusions of any investigations undertaken to date;

…

17. Notes that the data collected during the Lithuanian Parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defence (Seimas CNSD) inquiry into Lithuania's involvement in the CIA's secret detention programme has not been made public, and calls for the release of the data;”

“Translation into English

TOP SECRET

DECLASSIFIED

[Written by hand]

RECORD ON INSPECTION OF PREMISES

17 March 2010

Vilnius

The inspection commenced at [Written by hand] 2.15 p.m., completed at [Written by hand] 3.00 p.m.

The Prosecutor of the Investigation Department of Organised Crime and Corruption of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Republic of Lithuania [full name], pursuant to Articles 166, 167, 205, 207 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, arrived at [Written by hand] the territory located at Z. Sierakausko str. 25, Vilnius and pursuant to Articles 92, 179 and 207 of the Code of Criminal Procedure performed the inspection of objects relevant to the investigation of criminal acts and recorded the course and results of this investigative action.

…

The Prosecutor General's Office's Control Section prosecutor [full name] has been participating in the course of the investigative action during the recording of the acts and results thereof …

Objects inspected: [written by hand] territory located at Z. Sierakausko str. 25, Vilnius and auxiliary building therein.

During inspection it was established: [written by hand] the territory, address Z. Sierakausko str. 25, Vilnius is located next to Z. Sierakausko street. It is a brick wall fenced from the street side and a wired fence on the other side, a fenced territory of irregular shape. Along Z. Sierakausko Street the territory is fenced with a brick coloured wall, there are multi-storey dwelling houses surrounding the territory. There is a metal gate at the entrance to the territory. There is also a metal wicket. At the entrance, there is a parking lot. On the left side of the parking a bigger brick building is located. It might be called the main building. On the right (right corner of the territory), a smaller building, which might be called the auxiliary building is located. The auxiliary one is a brick walled, yellow coloured, single-floor building. The distance between the building wall and a fence along Z. Sierakausko str. is 5.7 m. The distance between another (back) side of the building and a fence perpendicular to Z. Sierakausko str. is 3.55 m. The auxiliary building is oblong, flat roofed. The length of the building is 17.50 m, width 6.30 m. The middle part of the building seems to be sticking out if observed from the front side of it. There are two lifting white coloured gates in this part of the building - entrances to garages. Windows of the building are white, plastic. The windows of the room marked as No. 2 in the scheme are equipped with metal lifting security levers. On both sides of the building there are entrance doors, i.e. plastic white doors. Windows and doors as well as rooms indicated in the scheme annexed to the record. On the facade of the building as well as in the territory, there are CCTVs. The inspection of the premises is commenced by entering the doors, which are located in the furthermost part of the building if the building is observed from the street. Inside walls of the building brown rooms, are bricked, plastered, coloured in yellow. All inside doors are made of plywood, light coloured, equipped with an ordinary lock. Floors are tiled in the rooms, corridors, sanitary rooms, kitchen, garages. Premises marked as No. 1 and No. 2 are in linoleum flooring. Ceilings in the rooms, corridors, kitchen, sanitary rooms, are covered in plastic panelling. Ceilings of premises No. 1 and No. 2 are plastered, coloured in white. Upon entering the aforementioned doors the entrance-hall No. 2, size 1.45 x 1.07 is located. On the right side the entrance door to the room No. 2 is located. The size of this room is 4.10 x 3.06 m. height 3.61 m. The walls of these premises are plastered, coloured in yellow. Paint is peeling in some lower parts of the wall, possibly due to humidity. There are no other special features of the walls visually notable.

There is a table in the room as well as used computer parts on the table and floors. There are two windows in the room, width 1.40 m, height 52 cm. Further from the entrance-hall there is a narrow corridor, width 80 cm. On the left side of the corridor sanitary room No. 2 is located. It consists of a lavatory and a sink. At the end of the corridor, there are doors to the garage No. 2. The garage is located over the entire area of the building, and along the room there is a pit, which is covered with planks at the time of inspection. In the garage, there are different boxes, old items, bicycles, etc. There is an electric heating boiler on the wall in the garage. The heating system of the building consists of radiators, which are located in the entire building. The size of the garage No. 2 is 7.05 x 3.65 m. There are doors from the garage to the kitchen. This room is 3.20 x 3.00 in size. There is one window in the room, it is l.33 width. Along the window, there is a table with chairs. The kitchen furniture along the wall consisting of catchall, electric stove, rack as well as a sink, equips the kitchen. By the wall, opposite to the wall with the window, a ‘Sharp’ refrigerator is located. There is a shower cubicle in the corner. Further, the entrance to the garage No. 1 and to room No. 1 from the kitchen is located.

The size of the garage No. 1 is 3.85 x 3.22 m. There is a little tractor, tyres, piano, and a rack with different items located in the garage. The size of the room No. 1 is 4.12 x 3.75 m. There are two windows in the room width 1.40 m. An oval table with 6 chairs located in the room. Another table is located in the corner of the room, close to the entrance-hall. There is a plastic grey relay box 2 x 20 size, 10 cm depth on the wall, which is the closest to Z. Sierakausko street. There are cable inputs equipped in it; the cables directed to the room are not connected. The box is installed 100 cm distance from the sidewall border of the entrance-hall. From this room one enters the entrance-hall No. 1, of 2.86 x 1.18 m in size. From the entrance-hall one also enters the sanitary room No. 1, which is equipped with a lavatory and sink. Both sanitary rooms, as well as the kitchen walls, are partly covered in tiles. In the entrance-hall, the exit from the building is accessible.”

“English translation

RECORD ON INSPECTION OF BUILDING AND TERRITORY LOCATED AT ANTAVILIŲ STR. 27A VILNIUS

4 June 2010

Vilnius

The inspection commenced at 9.20 a.m., completed at 10.35 a.m.

Vilnius Regional Prosecutor's Office prosecutor of the Investigation Department of Organised Crime and Corruption [full name], arrived at the building and territory located at Antaviliai str. [27] A, Vilnius following Articles 92, 179 and 207 of the Code of Criminal Procedure performed the inspection of the above-mentioned objects.

…

Persons who participated during the inspection and who were present during the inspection activities: the Prosecutor's General Office prosecutor of the Investigation Department of Organised Crime and Corruption [full name], the head of the board of the State Security Department [full name], the head of the Training Centre of the State Security Department [full name].

Weather conditions, lighting during inspection: daytime, fair weather with no sun, no rainfall.

Established during inspection: The territory is fenced with a metal wire fence with no additional safety or lighting devices. Entrance to the territory through a metal wicket, equipped with an ordinary lock, locked by an ordinary key. Vehicles enter through the metal gate. There is a building within the territory consisting of two sections. Section 1 seems to be residential. It is a two-storey building with a mansard, second floor with balconies. Outside decoration made from crushed bricks and painted panelling. Section 2 is of hangar type, outside decoration is made from tin-plate.

Premises equipped in both sections have numbers, premises include classrooms, working rooms, single and double residential rooms, kitchen and laundry rooms, leisure room (tables of a billiard, table tennis), library, storage rooms, WCs, garages, watchman room, closet, fitness room, shooting hall. Mansard is non-equipped; it is without thermal insulation as well. The perimeter of the building is monitored by CCTVs; none of the windows equipped with inside or outside window bars. There are no rooms designated for temporary detention or equipped with bars or in any other way adjusted for the forced deprivation of one's liberty.

[Written by hand] Note: the shooting hall is adapted merely for laser guns, not firearms. …”

“EXTRACT

[the name of the addressee blackened]

RESOLUTION no. 01-21-531 vs/02

To initiate [blackened] a file

25 July 2002 Vilnius city

[three lines of the text blackened]

in case [blackened] necessity to find and arrange premises [blackened] for the purpose of extradition (transfer) of working secret intelligence collaborators, also to ensure their protection and living conditions [the remaining part of text, some half page blackened].”

“EXTRACT

[blackened] file [blackened]

[blackened] ACTION PLAN

25/07 2002 Vilnius

[three lines of the text blackened]

1) to select premises and to equip them with necessary measures for the organisation of extradition of secret intelligence collaborators [blackened]

2) to organise the protection of secret intelligence collaborators, to provide them with essential living conditions.

[the remaining text comprising some one page blackened]”

“Translation into English

Captain R[…]. C.[…]

Acting Chief

of the Vilnius airport Border Checkpoint

OFFICIAL REPORT REGARDING ACCIDENT AT AIRPORT BORDER CHECKPOINT 6/10/2005 VILNIUS

On 5 October at 5.15 a.m. the unplanned plane from Antalya landed in Vilnius Airport BChP [Border Checkpoint]. The state border officer R.R[…] exercising the guard ‘Escort and inspection of aircraft’ attempted to approach the mentioned aircraft and to perform actions according to his service instructions (write down board number, find out where the plane arrived from, what was the time of departure, were there any passengers), however when he was about 400 metres away from the aircraft he was stopped by the Aviation Security staff and was denied access to the aircraft. Outside there was low visibility (fog), but it was possible to discern that the Aviation Security staff were patrolling around the aircraft, and also that there were two patrol vehicles of the Aviation Security parked. The officer saw how the vehicle departed from the mentioned aircraft and left the territory of the airport BChP through the gates. I contacted the chief of the Shift of the Aviation Security, who explained to me that the SBGS commanders had been informed about the landing of this aircraft and the aviation security actions undertaken. When the mentioned aircraft had fuelled up, it departed from the Vilnius Airport BCHP at 6.05 a.m.

Vilnius frontier district OD [Officer of the day] was informed about the above-mentioned incident.”

“Having been closely following the work of the parliamentary inquiry instituted by the Seimas National Security and Defence Committee (hereinafter - Committee) concerning the alleged transportation and confinement in the territory of the Republic of Lithuania of persons detained by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, I have decided immediately to inform the Committee about the events in Lithuania at the relevant time. I am confident that this would contribute to the objectivity of the investigation.

I would like to remind [you] that on 29 March 2004 Lithuania became a member of NATO. When seeking membership in this organisation and especially when approaching the acceptance of our country into the alliance, very intense and active negotiations with many consultations and meetings took place. Therefore communication with the future and subsequently fellow partners, i.e. the NATO organisation and its member States, was very close and active.

Particularly I would like to distinguish the cooperation with the strategic partner of Lithuania - the United States of America - whose support for Lithuania's acceptance into NATO would be hard to overestimate. This communication was performed on many different levels, from delegations of heads of State to delegations of politicians, civil servants, specialists of national defence and many other spheres. Also the implementation of joint projects and operations in the sphere of defence and security in cooperation with partners was and still is very important.

As the then head of State I was informed about the most important defence and security projects implemented in co-operation with some NATO partners as demonstrating examples of mutual trust and effective cooperation. The Committee should be familiar with this information.

However, I have never been informed about the issue concerning CIA prisons which is currently under investigation and I learnt about it only from the media. When I was asked about this issue live on air on the Lithuanian Radio and during the Lithuanian Television programme ‘Paskutinis klausimas’ (Last question) I replied to the host that I had never heard of and had never been informed about the above-mentioned operations in the territory of the Republic of Lithuania. My replies were heard by Lithuanian people and the Chairman of the Seimas National Security and Defence Committee Arvydas Anušauskas who participated in the programme. Once again I state that I was not aware and I was not informed about the alleged existence of a prison, detentions and activity related to this.

I am hoping that the National Security and Defence Committee of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania having examined disseminated information degrading the Lithuanian State shall publish the facts revealing the truth.”

“… Hereby we submit the requested documents and we would like to inform you that in the information system of the [SBGS ] the following data have been recorded:

…

5 US citizens arrived in the Republic of Lithuania when on 18 February 2005 the aircraft tail no. N787WH landed at Palanga airport:

1. [L.E.W.], doc. no. …

2. [F.X.B.], doc. no. . .

3. [E.M.V.], doc. no. …

4. [R.A.L.Z.], doc. no. …

5. [J.S.], doc. no. …

We do not possess any other date with regard to persons who crossed the border following the arrival of the indicated aircraft. … [I]t could be noted that when on 6 October 2005 at 5.15 a.m. the unplanned airplane from Antalya landed in Vilnius airport … [Border Checkpoint] the State Border officer … when about 400 metres away from the airplane was stopped by the Aviation Security staff … and restricted access to the aircraft … [T]here were two vehicles of the Aviation Security parked. The officer saw how the vehicle departed from the mentioned aircraft and left the territory of the Airport [Border Checkpoint] through the gates controlled by the Aviation Security staff. … Afterwards the SBGS received a classified letter from the [SSD]. …”