The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside
an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian
government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this
week.
Outside Lithuania the CIA used a former barn to interrogate
al Qaeda members.
Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped
coffee at a café, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use
harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a
time.
"The activities in that prison were illegal," said human
rights researcher John Sifton. "They included various forms of torture,
including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions."
Lithuanian officials provided ABC News with the documents
of what they called a CIA front company, Elite, LLC, which purchased the
property and built the "black site" in 2004.
Lithuania agreed to allow the CIA prison after President
George W. Bush visited the country in 2002 and pledged support for Lithuania's
efforts to join NATO.
"The new members of NATO were so grateful for the U.S. role
in getting them into that organization that they would do anything the U.S.
asked for during that period," said former White House counterterrorism czar
Richard Clarke, now an ABC News consultant. "They were eager to please and eager
to be cooperative on security and on intelligence matters."
Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite declined 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. Read that report here.
Until March 2004, the site was a riding academy and café
owned by a local family. The facility is in the town of Antaviliai, in the
forest 20 kilometers northeast of the city center of Vilnius, near an exclusive
suburb where many government officials live.