European court: Lithuania, Romania permitted CIA to torture militants

May 31 (UPI) -- The European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday the governments of Lithuania and Romania violated policy that prohibits torture by allowing U.S. intelligence agents to interrogate two suspected terrorists.

The two prisoners, held at Guantanamo Bay, were captured after the Sept. 11 attacks and detained at secret CIA operated prisons. The CIA "black sites" were kept secret for many years.

The court found Romania had hosted a CIA facility from 2003 to 2005 and Lithuania from 2005 to 2006, and authorities had been aware the CIA was subjecting the detainees to treatment that violated the European Convention that bans torture.

One of the prisoners, Abu Zubaydah, is a Saudi-born Palestinian and suspected organizer of the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. officials believe he was al-Qaida's chief recruiter in the 1990s and linked Osama Bin Laden to other militant cells.

Intelligence officials believe the other, Saudi-born Abd al-Nashiri, led al-Qaida's operations in the Gulf region.

According Thursday's ECHR ruling, Abu Zubaydah endured months of rough interrogations that included "waterboarding" and "slamming him into a wall and slapping his face; playing loud music while he was kept in a tall box; depriving him of food; and keeping him naked in cold conditions."

Abd al-Nashiri's testified interrogators hung him upside down for almost a month and used many of the same tactics claimed by Zubaydah.