Lithuania loses another case at ECHR over unlawful detention at alleged CIA prison

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday ruled that Lithuania must pay 30,000 euros in compensation to Saudi national Abd al-Rahim Hussayn Muhammad al-Nashiri for his unlawful detention in an alleged secret CIA prison in Lithuania two decades ago. An additional 10,000 euros will cover his legal expenses.

The court found that al-Nashiri was held for more than five months between 2005 and 2006 in a clandestine facility in Lithuania operated by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Lithuanian authorities were also found to have assisted in his removal from the country despite the clear risk of serious human rights violations, including the death penalty, in the US.

“The applicant had been held in total isolation from the outside world and in solitude, and all contact with his family had been cut off,” the ECHR stated in its press release.

The ruling may be appealed to the Grand Chamber within three months. Al-Nashiri had sought 100,000 euros in non-pecuniary damages, three times the amount awarded.

According to case documents, al-Nashiri was arrested in Dubai in October 2002 and has since been held in various secret CIA detention sites. The US considers him one of the most significant figures in the terrorist organisation al-Qaeda, allegedly involved in the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa, the 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and a similar attack on a French tanker in the Gulf of Aden in 2002.

He was classified as a “high-value detainee,” subject to enhanced interrogation techniques. Transferred to Lithuania in October 2005, he was held until March 25, 2006, when the alleged CIA prison in the country was closed. He is currently detained at the US-run Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

Military commission proceedings at Guantanamo are ongoing in his case, where he faces the death penalty for charges related to the attacks on the US military vessel and the French civilian tanker.

The ECHR has previously found violations of the European Convention on Human Rights in similar cases brought by al-Nashiri against Poland and Romania.

This is the third case Lithuania has lost at the Strasbourg court over the alleged CIA prison. In 2018, the ECHR ruled that a secret CIA detention facility operated in Lithuania between 2005 and 2006, where another Saudi national, Abu Zubaydah, was held. In January 2024, Lithuania was ordered to pay 100,000 euros to Saudi citizen Mustafa al-Hawsawi for unlawful detention.

Lithuania officially denies that a secret CIA prison operated on its territory to detain suspected terrorists. A 2009 parliamentary investigation by the Seimas National Security and Defence Committee concluded that there was no evidence that CIA detainees were brought to Lithuania, although it acknowledged that conditions for such a facility existed.

Lithuania maintains that the premises in Antaviliai, near Vilnius, were intended to host a intelligence support centre, not a prison, and that the suspicious flights carried equipment, not people. A 2014 US Senate report on secret CIA prisons did not name specific locations but referred to a facility codenamed “violet,” which human rights defenders believe was in Lithuania. The ECHR relied on this evidence in its rulings.

According to the US Senate report, the facility operated from early 2005 until 2006, when local officials refused to admit al-Hawsawi to a local hospital.

News portal 15min was the first to report on Tuesday’s ECHR ruling.