On January 16, 2024, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously found Lithuania responsible for multiple human-rights violations arising from its role in the CIA’s secret detention of Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi. The case examined Lithuania’s cooperation with the CIA and its failure to effectively investigate his allegations of mistreatment.
Detention Site Violet
The court drew on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2014 report and other evidence to locate the CIA facility known as Detention Site Violet in Lithuania. It found that al-Hawsawi was secretly held there in 2005–06 and subjected to conditions that included solitary confinement and continuous shackling. Lithuania allowed the CIA to transfer him out of the country to another secret site in Afghanistan. He was later taken to Guantánamo Bay.
What the court found
The judges found violations of the prohibition on inhuman or degrading treatment, the right to liberty and security, the right to respect for private life, and the right to an effective remedy. They also found that Lithuania assisted in his transfer despite a real risk of a flagrant denial of justice and exposure to the death penalty.
The respondent was Lithuania. The judgment addressed its duties under the European Convention on Human Rights. The criminal charges against al-Hawsawi were before a separate U.S. military commission at Guantánamo.
Read the European Court of Human Rights judgment in Al-Hawsawi v. Lithuania (application no. 6383/17).
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