The European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday that Lithuania must pay 30,000 euros in damages to Saudi national Abd Al-Rahim Hussein Al-Nashiri over his unlawful detention at a suspected CIA secret prison in the country two decades ago.
The Strasbourg-based court also ordered Lithuania to pay 10,000 euros to cover the applicant’s legal costs.
The court found that Al-Nashiri was held for more than five months at a classified CIA facility in Lithuania and that Lithuanian authorities enabled his transfer out of the country despite the risk that he would face a flagrant denial of justice and the death penalty in the United States.
According to the ruling, Al-Nashiri was held in complete isolation from the outside world, in solitary confinement and without contact with his family.
The judgment is not yet final and may be referred to the court’s Grand Chamber within three months. Al-Nashiri had sought 100,000 euros in nonpecuniary damages.
Al-Nashiri was arrested in Dubai in October 2002 and transferred through a network of secret CIA detention facilities. US authorities accuse him of involvement in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and other terrorist attacks. He is currently being held at the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he faces the death penalty.
Considered one of the CIA’s “high-value detainees”, Al-Nashiri was subjected to so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, a euphemism for torturing detainees in order to extract information. The court said he was transferred to Lithuania in October 2005 and remained there until March 25, 2006, when the CIA facility was closed.
Lithuania has never officially acknowledged that a CIA prison operated on its territory. The government has maintained that the facility in Antaviliai, near Vilnius, served as an intelligence support centre rather than a detention site.
The European Court of Human Rights has previously found Lithuania in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights in cases involving the CIA detention of Abu Zubaydah and Mustafa al Hawsawi.
The court relied in part on the 2014 US Senate report on the CIA’s secret detention program. Although the report did not identify locations by name, human rights groups have said the facility referred to as “Site Violet” was located in Lithuania. According to the Senate report, the site operated from early 2005 until 2006, when it was closed after Lithuanian officials refused to allow another detainee, Mustafa al Hawsawi, to be taken to a local hospital.
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