EU – Baltic States, Legislation, Lithuania, USA

"Too many unanswered questions remain,” British Liberal MEP Sarah Ludford told EUobserver on Monday (April 30) who was one of six MEPs from the European Parliament's justice and home affairs committee who visited Lithuania last week.

The delegation was on a three-day fact finding mission to determine whether a new probe into the alleged prisons should be launched, writes LETA/EUobserver.

Ludford said the site in Antaviliai, a former horse riding stable, is now being used as training ground by Lithuania's secret service.

"It's a metal box within a metal box. All American-equipped," she noted, citing as an example the still visible US-branded heavy pad locks.

The stables had been purchased in 2004 by Elite LLC, a company incorporated in Washington DC and Panama, before being sold to the Lithuanian secret service three years later. Residents in the vicinity recall seeing vehicles with tinted windows while the Americans were building a large warehouse at the stables. Following press reports and a European Parliament inquiry in 2007, Lithuania in 2009 finally admitted hosting the two detention centres widely believed to have hosted suspected terrorists on transit to the United States. The first centre was built in 2002. The second constructed in 2004.

Germany, Sweden, Spain, Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, Denmark, Turkey, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Bosnia and Romania were all allegedly involved in illegal rendition or CIA flight cases.

The parliament, in its 2007 inquiry, also criticized the national governments of Austria, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Britain for their lack co-operation into their investigation.

The former Polish secret service chief and interior minister, Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, was charged in relation to alleged CIA detainees held in Poland in March.