The Great Debate UK

Did Lithuania host a secret CIA prison?

-Clara Gutteridge, Renditions Investigator at legal charity Reprieve. The opinions expressed are her own.-

I welcome the Lithuanian parliament’s announcement that it will investigate allegations that a secret CIA prison operated on its territory from early 2004 to late 2005.

Unlike Poland and Romania – also alleged to have hosted secret CIA torture sites in the years following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan – the Lithuanians have responded in a way that befits a modern European democracy.

“If this is true,” Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said, “Lithuania has to clean up, accept responsibility, apologize, and promise that it will never happen again.”

By contrast, such openness has failed to emerge elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly sessions in 2006-2007, which considered Swiss Senator Dick Marty’s report detailing the allegations against Poland and Romania, were perhaps the most depressing political debates I have ever witnessed.

Representatives from all sides of the political spectrum in Poland and Romania united to “refute” the allegations. When the so-called moderates were asked in private why they were so furiously refusing to even countenance these extremely serious allegations, the response was, “you don’t understand – this is an attack against our country, and to consider it would be un-patriotic”.

Evidently, news of the importance of encouraging healthy dissent in a parliamentary democracy has yet to reach some parts of the New Europe, and Lithuania should be applauded for bucking this trend. As a newer recruit to NATO and the EU, Lithuania has far more to be insecure about when it comes to maintaining U.S. relations than relative old-hands Poland and Romania, yet its president has bravely chosen to stand for political accountability rather than trying to suppress the truth.