VILNIUS - Development of the mystery story about a CIA prison for al Qaeda suspects was supposed to be stopped by Lithuanian MPs, but a new confession boils up further speculation which could threaten the authority of Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite.
On Aug. 20, ABC News announced that Lithuanian officials provided the CIA with a building on the outskirts of Vilnius where as many as eight al Qaeda suspects were held for more than a year, until late 2005 when they were moved.
On Aug. 25, Grybauskaite, visiting the European Commission in Brussels, said at her press conference that the Lithuanian parliament will investigate the case of the prison mystery.
On Sept. 9, the Lithuanian parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee and National Security and Defense Committee decided that they have no facts regarding the allegation against Lithuania, and there is no ground for starting some parliamentary investigation. Both committees asked the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry to demand more information from U.S. institutions.
Arvydas Anusauskas, MP of the ruling Homeland Union - Lithuanian Christian Democrats, speaking at a briefing, said that he wrote a letter to ABC News journalist Matthew Cole asking for more information. Anusauskas received Cole's answer.
"He wrote that ABC News will not disclose its sources of information, which it maybe possesses," Anusauskas said, adding ironically "maybe possesses, maybe not."
Anusauskas said that the Rudninkai training base of the Public Security Service where al Qaeda suspects could be held (according to Russia Today TV) was indeed visited by foreigners but they were French, not Americans. He said that the base then was a place for storage of explosives confiscated from criminal gangs.
Although Dick Marty, the Swiss rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on secret detentions, said his own sources confirmed the ABC News report, PACE expressed no interest in this mysterious story at the moment.
Lithuanian daily Lietuvos Zinios reported that in Rudninkai one local man, who refused to say his name, told the daily that he saw the Americans visiting the base there. According to Lietuvos Zinios, later this man, speaking to other journalists, denied saying such things and even talking to the correspondent from Lietuvos Zinios. The newspaper speculates that the man could be frightened off by somebody. Lietuvos Zinios states that it has a recorded interview with the man.
On Sept. 5, the sensational statement appeared on YouTube where Domas Grigaliunas, a former employee of the Lithuanian military counterintelligence, says that such a prison could exist. The statement was placed on YouTube by anti-globalist Edvardas Kuzavinis, who is an unemployed re-émigré from the UK. However, Kuzavinis' credibility can be questioned by some skeptics 's he runs his Web site www.atoveiksmis.lt which states, among other things, that 9/11 terrorist attacks against the U.S. were organized by the U.S. government.
"I think there is a possibility that a prison for al Qaeda suspects was established in Lithuania," Grigaliunas said. According to this statement, his then chief, Jonas Markevicius, asked him to investigate the possibility of the establishment of such a detention center for the needs of "NATO partners." Now, Markevicius is Grybauskaites' chief adviser on national security. The material on YouTube is named 'Secret CIA prison in Lithuania for people from Afghanistan.'
According to Nerijus Maliukevicius, professor with the Vilnius-based International Relations and Political Science Institute, Lithuanian officials should press ABC News either to deny the information, or to confirm it with some concrete proof, because the current situation is exploited by the Kremlin-sponsored Russian media in its anti-Lithuanian propaganda warfare.
Accusations against Lithuania were denied by all current and former leaders of all political colors except the controversial Rolandas Paksas, who was Lithuanian president from February 26, 2003 to April 6, 2004, when he was impeached by the parliament. Paksas gave no comments on this issue. Now he is a member of the European Parliament.
