Violation of right to fair trial

The chamber held unanimously that there had been violations of the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment/investigation because of Lithuania’s failure to effectively investigate al-Hawsawi’s allegations “and because of its complicity in the CIA secret detainee programme.

“It also held that there were violations to articles relating to the rights to a fair trial and life, as well as abolition of the death penalty, according to the press release, because Lithuania assisted al-Hawsawi’s “transfer from its territory in spite of a real risk that he could face a flagrant denial of justice and the death penalty.”

The release said the chamber held there also have been violations to right to liberty and security, right to respect for private life and right to an effective remedy.

The court said it gained key information from a US Senate panel report from 2014 that said the CIA’s interrogation of al Qaeda terrorism suspects in secret prisons was more brutal than policymakers were told and in some cases amounted to torture that failed to generate effective intelligence.

“While not commenting on the specific case, I’d note that CIA’s detention and interrogation program ended in 2009,” a CIA spokesperson said.

The Guantanamo detention centre in Cuba was established by Republican President George W. Bush in 2002 to house foreign terrorism suspects following the 2001 hijacked plane attacks on New York and the Pentagon that killed about 3,000 people. Its population grew to a peak of about 800 inmates before it started to shrink.

It came to symbolise the excesses of the US “war on terror” because of harsh interrogation methods that critics have said amounted to torture.