Report: CIA torture prison found in Lithuania

The CIA has built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, ABC News has reported.

Citing a Lithuanian government official and a former US intelligence agent, the US TV network said the agency built the concrete prison inside what had been an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius.

Documents provided by Lithuanian officials showed a now-defunct CIA front company, Elite LLC, bought the property from a family and built the “black site” in 2004, the report added.

After former president George W. Bush visited Lithuania in 2002 and pledged to support its bid to join NATO, the country agreed to allow the CIA prison, according to ABC News.

“The new members of NATO were so grateful for the US role in getting them into that organization that they would do anything the (United States) asked for during that period,” said former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke, who now works as an ABC News consultant.

This is while Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite denied ABC’s request for an interview.

ABC News first reported that Lithuania was one of three eastern European countries, along with Poland and Romania, where the CIA secretly interrogated suspected high-value al-Qaeda terrorists, but until now, the precise site had not been confirmed.

Former CIA officials told ABC that as many as eight al-Qaeda suspects were held for more than a year at the prison. A thick concrete wall inside the onetime riding area hid cells and interrogation areas from locals’ view.

The Lithuanian prison was the last “black” site open in Europe, after the CIA’s secret prison in Poland was closed down in late 2003 or early 2004.

The prison was the last of eight built after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks where the CIA detained and interrogated alleged al-Qaeda operatives ABC said. Other CIA prisons were in Thailand, Romania, Poland, Morocco and Afghanistan it added.

SG/SS/RE