Oh, big surprise

But … Lithuania? That was always my first question about this story. And I was probably late to it. It seems to me I picked it up only a couple weeks ago.

The CIA used at least two secret detention centres in Lithuania after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks on the US, a Lithuanian inquiry has found.

The report by a Lithuanian parliamentary committee says that in 2005 and 2006 CIA chartered planes were allowed to land in Lithuania.

It says that no Lithuanian officials were allowed near the aircraft, nor were they told who was on board ….

…. Poland and Romania hosted similar CIA “black sites”, media reports say.
In Lithuania, at least eight terror suspects were held at one centre on the outskirts of the capital Vilnius, the investigation found.

It was formerly a riding school and the suspects were reportedly held there between 2004 and 2005.

In August this year, US media reports claimed that Lithuania, Poland and Romania all hosted secret CIA interrogation centres.

But the parliamentary report appears to absolve Lithuania’s political leaders of responsibility for any human rights violations that may have been committed by the CIA, the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Moscow.

It says even the president was unaware of exactly what the US intelligence service was doing.

The only thing that’s really surprising about this is that it was Lithuania. Not that any ancient legend says they are the paladins to lead us to new enlightenment, or anything like that. But I don’t know. Is it unfair to mutter something about the Soviet experience? You know, like, you’d think Lithuania, not even twenty years out of Soviet reach ….

Okay, that’s probably not fair. There are also rumors of similar sites in Poland and Romania, so maybe they’re just calling on some of Europe’s surviving old-school bonebreakers.

Hired goons. Why not? There will always be a market for cruelty.