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ECHR Fines Romania, Lithuania for Hosting CIA Prisons
* The European Court for Human Rights has found Romania and Lithuania guilty of violating the European ban on torture for hosting secret CIA prisons where terrorism suspects were tortured, balkaninsight.com informs.
The European Court of Human Rights in a judgment on Thursday said Romania and Lithuania had violated the European prohibition on torture, and ordered them to pay 100,000 euros in damages each to two terrorism suspects who were detained and tortured in CIA jails in the countries.
The Strasbourg court ruled that Romania had hosted a CIA secret prison under the code name Detention Site Black between September 2003 and November 2005 and urged it to bring all the responsible officials to justice as soon as possible.
The case against Romania was submitted in 2012 by Abd Al Rahim Husseyn Muhammad Al Nashiri, who faces the death penalty in the US for his alleged role in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, which left 17 dead, and another bombing of a French oil tanker, the Limburg, in 2002.
The Saudi national was captured in the United Arab Emirates in 2002 and was held in Afghanistan, Thailand and Poland before being moved to Romania. He is now in US detention in Gauntanamo Bay. The court therefore had no direct access to him.
The court concluded that Al Nashiri has been detained in Detention Site Black for about 18 months, and that Romania's authorities had known the CIA would subject him to treatment contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights.
According to the ruling, Romanian officials also allowed his transfer to other CIA detention sites, exposing him to further ill treatment.
“The Court therefore found that Mr Al Nashiri had been within Romania’s jurisdiction and that the country had been responsible for the violation of his rights under the Convention,” it said.
Romania should “conclude a full investigation into Mr Al Nashiri’s case as quickly as possible and, if necessary, punish any officials responsible. The country should also seek assurances from the United States that Mr Al Nashiri will not suffer the death penalty”, it added.
"This ruling stands as a sharp rebuke to Romania’s shameful attempts to cover-up the truth about its hosting of a secret CIA prison.
"It is critical for ending impunity for European complicity in the CIA’s torture programme,” Amrit Singh, the lead lawyer on the case with the Open Society Justice Initiative, who represented al-Nashiri before the ECHR, said in a press release sent to BIRN.
The same verdict was issued against Lithuania, concerning another terror suspect, Saudi-born Palestinian Abu Zubaydah, also now in Gauntanamo. The CIA prison in Lithuania operated in 2005-2006.
The court has ruled in recent years against several Eastern European and Balkan states, including Poland and Macedonia, for agreeing to host CIA secret detention sites. None of the countries has prosecuted any of the responsible officials.
Al Nashiri’s lawyers in Romania filed a complaint to the prosecutor’s office in 2012 after which an investigation began. The outcome of the probe is still pending.
The office of Romania’s Attorney General told BIRN that it needs 30 days to come up with answers to BIRN’s questions about the case.
The European court’s ruling comes just two weeks after Gina Haspel was sworn in as CIA director, despite her involvement in supervising a CIA black site in Bangkok, Thailand, where al-Nashiri was subjected to waterboarding.
But although the debate was intense in the United States over Haspel’s involvement in the renditions programme, in Romania it did not cause any echoes.
Bucharest-based independent foreign policy analysts Bogdan Nedea told BIRN that Romania’s government is eager to keep the case under wraps.
The country is too dependent on the strategic partnership with the United States and sees any acknowledgement of the CIA black site as a direct accusation against Washington.
"The topic wouldn’t be necessarily damaging for the bilateral relation under normal circumstances, but under the current leadership in both countries it could indeed cause hassle,” Nedea explained.
“On the one hand, Mr. Trump's policy towards his allies ('the pay to stay') puts some pressure on Romania, which finds itself in the position of consumer of security rather than provider and thus feels at risk of losing this security,” he added and said that Romania would not risk this relationship for something that happened years ago.