A former secret CIA prison soon to be sold in Lithuania?
The Lithuanian State Security Department is about to put up for sale one of its training centers. This one could have been used by the CIA as a prison where individuals suspected of terrorism were tortured
The Lithuanian government is reportedly preparing to sell a building suspected of having been a secret CIA prison known as "Project No. 2" or "Violet Detention Site", in which detainees suspected of terrorist acts were subjected to "enhanced interrogations".
Located in Antaviliai, about 20 kilometers from the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, the 1,000-square-meter building has the appearance of a steel barn and has windowless and soundproofed rooms, as well as an electric generator and its own water supply. Turto Bankas - a fund that manages the sale of public properties - said on Jan. 24 that it was preparing to sell the site at auction, for a starting price and date still unknown, as reported by Lithuanian public radio and television LRT.
The site was used as a training center by the Lithuanian State Security Department (VSD) until last December, when it was sold to Turto Bankas.
Prior to that, the ten-room building could have been used as a CIA detention center in 2005 and 2006 under the "extraordinary rendition" program. Individuals suspected of terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan would have been held there in solitary confinement by the U.S. intelligence agency, being subjected to constant light and high intensity noise, as The Guardian reports.
A 2014 U.S. Senate report on the CIA's torture program referred to the "Purple Site" without specifying the country in which the building was located, but human rights organizations believe it is the Antaviliai site, according to LRT.
"It was a heavily guarded building where you could do whatever you wanted"
"It was a heavily guarded building where you could do whatever you wanted. What exactly was going on there, we have not determined," Arvydas Anusauskas, who led a Lithuanian parliamentary inquiry into the site in 2010, told Reuters. According to the British media outlet, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) learned in 2018 that prisoners at the site were shaved upon arrival and blindfolded or hooded while having their legs shackled.
In January 2011, however, the Lithuanian parliament's inquiry concluded that the Antaviliai site was not being used as a prison, although its actual purpose could not be revealed due to state secrets, according to LRT. The Lithuanian government also denied that the site was used by the CIA to detain individuals.
Detainees linked to al-Qaeda
According to The Guardian, the U.S. Senate report states that the detainees at the mysterious "Purple Site" had already been subjected to so much "enhanced interrogation" - a euphemism for torture sessions - that many of them had been "drained of all usable intelligence."
Among the list of prisoners was Abu Zubaydah, an accused senior al-Qaeda member who was captured in Pakistan six months after 9/11 and has been held without charge since. It emerged that he was not in fact a member of the jihadist organization, and in 2018 the ECHR ordered Lithuania to pay the Palestinian €130,000 in compensation. Other prisoners held at the site included Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
The site was reportedly closed in 2006 after Lithuania refused to admit a third prisoner, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, to hospital. All three men are currently still being held at Guantanamo, as reported by the British newspaper.
Translated by: D.V.
Source: RT France
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