Another “Black Site” Case Al-Hawsawi v Lithuania (App. No.6383/17)

The case concerns the extraordinary rendition, unacknowledged incommunicado detention, and ill-treatment of Mustafa al-Hawsawi in Lithuania, during the operation of the CIA-led rendition, detention and interrogation programme (2002–2008).¹ Between February 2005 and March 2006, the CIA ran a secret detention site (“black site”)² in Lithuania, codenamed Detention Site Violet in the US Senate Report on the CIA programme.³ Despite being heavily redacted, the report names the applicant as one of the individuals detained at Detention Site Violet. Al-Hawsawi, a Saudi citizen born in 1968, is one of the 17 CIA “high-value detainees”, deemed such because of the quality of intelligence they were alleged to possess. He was captured in Pakistan alongside Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in March 2003 and was rendered by the CIA to various secret detention sites where he was subjected to prolonged and intense torture.⁴ In September 2006, he was transferred to US military custody at Guantánamo Bay, where he remains detained in complete isolation and suffers from severe medical conditions caused by torture and the lack of adequate medical care. In 2012, al-Hawsawi was charged with four others by a US Military Commission for crimes in connection with the 11 September 2001 attacks. The case has been mired in pre-trial proceedings for more than a decade.⁵.