Secret CIA 'Torture' Prison Discovered
Qahir Al-Ashrar
ABC News Finds the Location of a "Black Site" for Alleged Terrorists in
Lithuania
By BRIAN ROSS and MATTHEW COLE
Nov. 18, 2009 "ABC News" -- 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
caf�, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh
tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a time.
A full report on the prison can be seen on ABC's World News with Charles
Gibson tonight.
"The activities in that prison were illegal," said human rights researcher
John Sifton. "They included various forms of torture, including sleep
deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions."
Lithuanian officials provided ABC News with the documents of what they
called a CIA front company, Elite, LLC, which purchased the property and
built the "black site" in 2004.
Lithuania agreed to allow the CIA prison after President George W. Bush
visited the country in 2002 and pledged support for Lithuania's efforts to
join NATO.
"The new members of NATO were so grateful for the U.S. role in getting them
into that organization that they would do anything the U.S. asked for during
that period," said former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke,
now an ABC News consultant. "They were eager to please and eager to be
cooperative on security and on intelligence matters."
Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite declined ABC's request for an
interview.
ABC News first reported that Lithuania was one of three eastern European
countries, along with Poland and Romania, where the CIA secretly
interrogated suspected high-value al-Qaeda terrorists, but until now the
precise site had not been confirmed. Read that report here.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Investigation/story?id=1322866
Until March 2004, the site was a riding academy and caf� owned by a local
family. The facility is in the town of Antiviliai, in the forest 20
kilometers northeast of the city center of Vilnius, near an exclusive suburb
where many government officials live.
A "Building Within A Building"
In March 2004, the family sold the property to Elite, LLC, a now-defunct
company registered in Delaware and Panama and Washington, D.C. That same
month, Lithuania marked its formal admission to NATO.
The CIA constructed the prison over the next several months, apparently
flying in prefabricated elements from outside Lithuania. The prison opened
in Sept. 2004.
According to sources that saw the facility, the riding academy originally
consisted of an indoor riding area with a red metallic roof, a stable and a
cafe. The CIA built a thick concrete wall inside the riding area. Behind the
wall, it built what one Lithuanian source called a "building within a
building."
On a series of thick concrete pads, it installed what a source called
"prefabricated pods" to house prisoners, each separated from the other by
five or six feet. Each pod included a shower, a bed and a toilet. Separate
cells were constructed for interrogations. The CIA converted much of the
rest of the building into garage space.
Intelligence officers working at the prison were housed next door in the
converted stable, raising the roof to add space. Electrical power for both
structures was provided by a 2003 Caterpillar autonomous generator. All the
electrical outlets in the renovated structure were 110 volts, meaning they
were designed for American appliances. European outlets and appliances
typically use 220 volts.
The prison pods inside the barn were not visible to locals. They describe
seeing large amounts of earth being excavated during the summer of 2004.
Locals who saw the activity at the prison and approached to ask for work
were turned away by English-speaking guards. The guards were replaced by new
guards every 90 days.
Former CIA officials directly involved or briefed on the highly classified
secret prison program tell ABC News that as many as eight suspects were held
for more than a year in the Vilnius prison. Flight logs viewed by ABC News
confirm that CIA planes made repeated flights into Lithuania during that
period. In November 2005, after public disclosures about the program, the
prison was closed, as was another "black site" in Romania.
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 Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, Ramzi bin al Shihb and Abu
Zubaydah, to Guantanamo.
In August 2009, after ABC News reported the existence of the secret prison
outside Vilnius, Lithuanian president Grybauskaite called for an
investigation. "If this is true," Grybauskaite said, "Lithuania has to clean
up, accept responsibility, apologize, and promise it will never happen
again."
At the time, a Lithuanian government official denied that his country had
hosted a secret CIA facility. The CIA told ABC News that reporting the
existence of the Lithuanian prison was "irresponsible" and declined to
discuss the location of the prison.
On Tuesday, the CIA again declined to talk about the prison. "The CIA's
terrorist interrogation program is over," said CIA spokesman Paul
Gimigliano. "This agency does not discuss publicly where detention
facilities may or may not have been."
Former CIA officials told ABC News that the prison in Lithuania was one of
eight facilities the CIA set-up after 9/11 to detain and interrogate top
al-Qaeda operatives captured around the world. Thailand, Romania, Poland,
Morocco, and Afghanistan have also been identified as countries that housed
secret prisons for the CIA. President Barack Obama ordered all the sites
closed shortly after taking office in January.
The Lithuanian prison was the last "black" site opened in Europe, after the
CIA's secret prison in Poland was closed down in late 2003 or early 2004.
"It obviously took a lot of effort to keep [the prison] secret," said John
Sifton, whose firm One World Research investigates human rights abuses.
"There's a reason this stuff gets kept secret."
"It's an embarrassment, and a crime."