STRASBOURG: The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday condemned Lithuania over the torture of a Saudi man in a secret CIA prison, the second case to target the Baltic nation.

       Judges found that Lithuania had violated several provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights, which it upholds, especially articles 2 (right to life) and 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment), the court said.

       Lithuania must also pay Mustafa Al Hawsawi 100,000 euros ($109,000) in damages for “blindfolding or hooding, solitary confinement, the continuous use of leg shackles, and exposure to noise and light”.

       Such techniques were “standard CIA practice under the secret detainee programme at the time”, although not “the harshest” applied in Lithuania, the court added.

       Al Hawsawi, born in 1968, was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and suspected by US authorities of involvement in the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.

       He is now held at the US military base in Guantanamo, Cuba, where he still faces a death penalty case.

       The ECHR said he had claimed he was taken to a secret CIA detention centre in Lithuania in 2005.

       The clandestine US prisons were set up in several countries, including Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Afghanistan and Thailand, at the beginning of the “War on Terror” launched by the US government in response to the Sept 11 attacks.

       The court based its ruling on a 2014 report published by the US Senate on “CIA torture”.

       “That report had specifically named Mr Al Hawsawi as having been detained at the CIA secret detainee site codenamed ‘Detention Site Violet’,” located in Lithuania “in light of evidence gathered by the court,” it said.

       “Lithuanian authorities had to have been aware that the CIA would subject him to such treatment ... given the information widely available at the time,” it added.

       Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2024