European Court Finds Romania and Lithuania Hosted CIA Torture Sites, Orders Damages

The European Court of Human Rights issues rulings finding that Romania and Lithuania violated the European Convention on Human Rights by hosting CIA secret prisons where terrorism suspects were tortured. The court conclusively determines that Romania operated a CIA black site from September 2003 to November 2005, and Lithuania from February 2005 to March 2006, where Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were held and subjected to waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and other torture. The rulings order both countries to pay 100,000 euros in damages to each victim, but result in no criminal prosecutions of officials who facilitated the torture sites.

The ECHR’s investigation establishes that Romania hosted the CIA facility at a military compound near Bucharest, receiving substantial payments from the CIA for cooperation. Romanian authorities provided security, logistical support, and denial of facility’s existence despite clear knowledge that torture was occurring. The court finds that Romanian officials were aware detainees were being subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques that constituted torture under international law, yet continued hosting the facility and preventing any oversight or accountability. Romania’s government repeatedly denied the black site’s existence even after credible journalistic investigations and European Parliament inquiries documented the facility.

Lithuania operated a CIA black site in a former riding school in Antaviliai, a suburb of Vilnius, from early 2005 to March 2006. The facility was established with direct approval from Lithuanian State Security Department officials and operated under complete secrecy. Parliamentary investigations later revealed that Lithuania received CIA payments and that senior officials authorized the facility despite understanding it would be used for interrogations that violated Lithuanian and European law. The court finds that Lithuanian authorities’ cooperation in secret detention and torture violated their obligations under the Convention’s prohibition on torture, right to liberty, and right to an effective remedy.

The rulings build on the 2014 ECHR judgment against Poland for hosting a CIA black site from 2002-2003. Together, the three judgments provide definitive legal findings that three NATO allies and European Union members knowingly facilitated CIA torture on their territory in direct violation of fundamental human rights law. The courts emphasize that the absolute prohibition on torture cannot be derogated even for national security or counterterrorism purposes, and that European democracies cannot shield themselves from accountability by claiming they were assisting the United States.

Despite the clear court findings, neither Romania nor Lithuania prosecutes its own officials for complicity in torture, nor do they cooperate with efforts to prosecute CIA personnel who conducted torture on their soil. Romanian and Lithuanian prosecutors claim insufficient evidence or that statutes of limitations have expired—excuses the ECHR explicitly rejects by noting that torture is an ongoing crime and international law requires investigation and prosecution regardless of when violations occurred. The countries pay the ordered damages to Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who remain imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay without trial, but provide no broader accountability or acknowledgment of wrongdoing.

The ECHR rulings represent the highest level of international judicial finding that CIA torture occurred and that European allies facilitated war crimes. The judgments include detailed factual findings about the locations, dates, treatment of detainees, and knowledge of government officials—providing legal documentation that could support criminal prosecutions under universal jurisdiction principles. Yet no prosecutions result in any country. The United States refuses to extradite CIA personnel, European countries decline to prosecute their own officials, and victims remain imprisoned without recourse. The cases demonstrate that even definitive court judgments documenting torture are insufficient to produce accountability when perpetrators are powerful governments. International human rights law, despite clear violations proven in court, lacks enforcement mechanisms beyond symbolic damages payments. The European black sites rulings serve primarily as historical record of complicity in torture rather than vehicles for justice, illustrating the gap between legal norms and practical accountability for state-sponsored war crimes.