Amnesty International Calls on Lithuania to Reopen Investigation Into Rendition Flight

Posted September 29th, 2011 at 8:53 am (UTC-5)
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The human rights group Amnesty International has called on Lithuania to reopen an investigation into secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons in the country based on what they say is new evidence of a rendition flight.

At a press conference in Vilnius Thursday, Amnesty International analyst Julie Hall says a February 2005 flight that allegedly carried al-Qaida suspect Abu Zubaydah flew from Morocco and landed in the Lithuanian capital. Amnesty says it believes Zubaydah was tortured at a CIA site in Lithuania.

However, two Lithuanian investigations, one by a parliamentary committee and the other by the country's prosecutors, concluded there was no evidence that people had been held at the CIA-controlled sites. Amnesty International says the evidence Lithuania's prosecutors had on possible human rights violations was not fully investigated and that this is a “previously undiscovered flight.”

According to the Associated Press, Lithuania's deputy prosecutor general, Darius Raulusaitis, thanked the human rights organization and pledged that the new information will be properly assessed.