Lithuania must investigate allegations of payments for CIA prison establishment, says foreign minister

Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys has called for an investigation into allegations that the country received money from the US for establishing a detention centre for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), BNS/LRT reports.

“The question of these millions, which were allegedly paid, is, in my opinion, a matter of Lithuania’s honour to answer. We have no right to leave it covered up,” Budrys said in an interview with the journalism channel Redakcija.

“This payment casts a shadow on everyone who has held or holds any position in the state,” he added.

In 2014, the US Senate released a report on the CIA’s use of torture against suspected terrorists in secret detention centres. The report mentioned a facility codenamed “Violet,” operational between 2005 and 2006. While the specific country and officials involved were redacted, human rights advocates believe the facility was located in Lithuania, in Antaviliai near Vilnius.

The report also stated that the CIA allocated large sums of cash to local officials to secure cooperation in establishing such centres. It noted that the first detention cell at the Violet site proved insufficient due to increasing detainee numbers, prompting the CIA to propose building a new, larger facility in the country. A sum in US dollars was offered to express “gratitude” for support, though the exact amount and recipients were redacted in the report.

Budrys acknowledged the Senate report’s findings, stating there was no reason to doubt its documented information. However, he said that during his time at the State Security Department, he was involved in preparing documents for the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) regarding the alleged CIA prison in Lithuania. According to Budrys, Lithuania’s documents contain no evidence that such a facility operated in the country.

“That information simply does not exist,” he said. “Based on what we have in our cases and archives, it is almost impossible to do more in Lithuania without additional measures. We redacted an enormous number of documents before submitting them to the ECHR.”

Budrys recalled multiple meetings with the then-Prosecutor General and the Ministry of Justice to discuss Lithuania’s submissions to the ECHR. He said Lithuania took a different approach by sending representatives to explain the documents and clarify terms such as “intelligence facility” and “intelligence operations support facility.”

“The ECHR concluded that a detention centre did operate in Lithuania because there were too many inconsistencies and anomalies in the documents,” Budrys said. “Mixed flight numbers, complex landings, routes, and so on. This creates confusion, so in theory, anyone involved in the programme who didn’t know the exact location at the time could have been here or elsewhere. And prove that it wasn’t.”

Earlier this month, the Strasbourg court awarded 30,000 euros to Saudi Arabian citizen Abd Al Rahim Hussein Al-Nashiri for his unlawful detention in a secret US prison in Lithuania two decades ago. The court also ordered Lithuanian authorities to seek assurances from Washington that Al-Nashiri, a suspected terrorist, would not face the death penalty. This was the third such ECHR ruling in cases against Lithuania.

The first public report of a possible CIA detention centre in Lithuania came in 2009 from US television network ABC News, which claimed that eight suspected terrorists were held near Vilnius between 2004 and 2005.