European Human Rights Court Exposes Further Complicity in CIA Torture

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg found Lithuania and Romania complicit in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program in a ruling on May 31, 2018.

Aisha Maniar , Truthout
PUBLISHED
June 2, 2018

The appointment of Gina Haspel as the new CIA director has brought the issue of extraordinary rendition and CIA torture back onto the radar, opening up a much-needed debate that has revealed how little is known about the program and its victims more than a decade after the CIA claims to have shut it down.

The program would not have been possible without the complicity of dozens of states worldwide; the fact that Haspel ran a CIA torture prison in Thailand in 2002 is evidence of this. A 2013 Open Society Justice Initiative report mentions 54 foreign governments participating, with 27 of them in Europe. Claims have been made concerning other states, too. Like Haspel, government officials in these countries have been evasive about their role in the CIA program.

Further light has been shed on the scale of global complicity in a ruling made by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on May 31, finding Lithuania and Romania complicit in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program.

The complaint against Lithuania, brought by CIA torture “poster child” Abu Zubaydah, found that he had been held at the purpose-built “Site Violet” from February 2005 to March 2006; the state had known about his treatment there and facilitated his onward journey to further torture, all in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights‘ absolute ban on the use of torture.

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https://truthout.org/articles/european-human-rights-court-exposes-further-complicity-in-cia-torture/