Lithuania paid more than $110,000 to Abu Zubaydah, the Guant namo detainee, known as the forever prisoner in compensation, for allowing the CIA to hold him at a secret site outside Vilnius where he was subjected to forms of torture.
The European Court of Human Rights ordered the Lithuanian government to pay more than three years for violating European laws banning the use of torture.
It marks a significant change in the treatment of Zubaydah, who has been detained by the US for more than 20 years without charge.
Six months after 9-11, Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan. The CIA and the lawyers for the Bush administration tried to justify his torture by claiming he was a very senior figure in Al Qaeda. He was not a member of the organisation and has never been charged with involvement in 9-11.
Since his arrest, Zubaydah has been held incommunicado for much of the time, at the insistence of the CIA, as part of its efforts to prevent details of his torture from becoming public.
Lawyers for Zubaydah believe that it is highly unlikely that Lithuania would have made the compensation payment without approval from Washington.
Mark Denbeaux, one of the Zubaydah's legal team in the US, told the Guardian that the situation is a lot less incommunicado when you pay €100,000 to someone and the whole world knows about it.
The move is consistent with the idea that the US is softening its position on the detention of the forever prisoners. The US could clearly have kept Lithuania from handing over the money and the question is, why didn't they? On January 11th, the Lithuanian payment comes just days before the 20th anniversary of the military prison at Guant namo, which received its first detainees on January 11th, 2002. There have been signs of a shifting attitude towards Zubaydah and the torture that was inflicted upon him by CIA agents and contractors in recent months.
In October, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in a case in which the US government is trying to block two CIA contractors from testifying in Poland about the torture Zubaydah suffered in 2002 and 2003 at a secret or black site in that country. In the course of the hearing, several justices, including conservatives, broke a legal taboo by openly using the word torture In Zubaydah's case against Lithuania, which was led on the European side by his lawyer Helen Duffy. The European Court of Human Rights heard that Zubaydah was held on a CIA black site in that country from February 2005 to March 2006. The site, codenamed Violet, was located on the outskirts of Vilnius.
The most brutal form of torture endured by Zubaydah occurred in 2002 when he was held at a CIA black site in Thailand. An entire program of torture, euphemistically referred to as enhanced interrogation techniques, was devised for the prisoner by two psychologists under contract to the agency.
Zubaydah was waterboarded a type of controlled drowning at least 83 times in August 2002, as well as being placed in a coffin-sized box for days on end.
European judges found that Zubaydah was unlikely to have suffered from the harshest forms of torture while in Lithuania. The lawyers argued that he was subjected to techniques that still amounted to torture, including sensory and sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, loud noise and harsh light.
The money transferred by Lithuania is now in a bank account. Zubaydah is unable to get the sum due to his detention in Guant namo and his assets have been frozen by the US Treasury.
A similar freezing of his assets by the United Nations Security Council was reversed two years ago after a petition by his lawyers.