Global Times

Europe court condemns hosts of CIA ‘black sites’

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The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Thursday that Lithuania and Romania were complicit in a controvers­ial CIA program to hold terror suspects in secret detention sites on their territorie­s.

Two suspects now being held at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay lodged the case with the court in 2011 and 2012, saying they were illegally held and tortured at CIA “black sites” in Romania and Lithuania from 2004 to 2006.

The court said Romanian authoritie­s knew that Saudi national Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri would risk torture and the death penalty when it allowed the CIA to hold him at a secret facility in their country from April 2004 to November 2005.

Nashiri is accused of orchestrat­ing maritime terror attacks including the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen that left 17 dead.

The former Soviet republic of Lithuania was found complicit in hosting a secret CIA prison from February 2005 to March 2006, when it illegally held a top Palestinia­n operative for Al Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah.

A 2014 US Senate report found that both Zubaydah and Nashiri – considered “highlevel detainees” – were subject to “enhanced interrogat­ion techniques” in CIA detention. These included waterboard­ing, or simulated drowning.

The ECHR found that in both cases the suspects were effectivel­y within the national jurisdicti­ons of Lithuania and Romania. Both countries were therefore “responsibl­e for the violation” of their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.

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