Lithuania says Saudi terrorism suspect’s torture claim is not proven

Vilnius says torture claims not proven

VILNIUS // A Lithuanian court has denied “victim status” to a Saudi terrorism suspect held in Guantanamo who claims he was tortured at a secret CIA jail in the Baltic state.

The court in Vilnius dismissed a petition by Mustafa al-Hawsawi, 47, ruling that the evidence presented by his defence amounted to “assumptions” rather than “objective facts”, and failed to prove the CIA ever detained him at an alleged “black site” in Lithuania.

Hawsawi’s lawyer Ingrida Botyriene said on Tuesday that she would appeal against the ruling.

Victim status would allow Hawsawi’s lawyers access to material in a Lithuanian investigation into an alleged CIA black site. Lithuania is a staunch US ally, having joined Nato and the European Union in 2004.

Kyra Hild, a legal adviser for the London-based Redress rights group, said it “will most certainly” take the case to the European Court of Human Rights if Lithuania’s appeal court rules against Hawsawi.

Arvydas Anusauskas, who headed a parliamentary probe into alleged CIA secret jails, said terrorism suspects seek victim status in Europe in the hope of avoiding capital punishment in the US.

Hawsawi was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and faces the death penalty if found guilty of involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

His lawyers claim Hawsawi was tortured at alleged secret CIA prisons for Al-Qaeda suspects in Lithuania and neighbouring Poland before being sent to the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in 2006.

Lithuanian prosecutors reopened a probe into the alleged so-called black site after an explosive US Senate report in 2014 detailing US torture of detainees.

The redacted public report did not name the European countries involved, but human rights activists said the CIA used a converted horse-riding school near Vilnius as a secret prison described as “Violet” in 2005-2006.

In 2009, an inquiry by the Lithuanian parliament identified two secret lock-ups which it said may have been used by Washington from 2003 to 2006. But despite records showing aircraft from the CIA landed in Lithuania, it was impossible to say whether any Al-Qaeda suspects were aboard.

* Agence France Presse