The US ABC News announced on August 20 that allegedly a secret CIA prison operated in Lithuania until 2005. The Lithuanian officials have denied those allegations.

The station informed that the Lithuanian officials had provided the CIA with a building on the outskirts of Vilnius, where as many as 8 suspects were held for more than a year after 9/11 until late 2005. The ABC News website stated that ‘Former CIA officials directly involved or briefed on the highly classified program tell ABC News that Lithuanian officials provided the CIA with a building on the outskirts of Vilnius, the country’s capital, where as many as eight suspects were held for more than a year, until late 2005 when they were moved because of public disclosures about the program.’

The officials in Vilnius deny those allegations as rumours and a ‘fantasy’. The President Grybauskaite said during a press conference on August 21 and was quoted by Delfi.lt “I have information that this never took place, and, as you well understand, I’m not likely to encounter any data indicating otherwise. I have no data, but the reports are unpleasant indeed, and it is very bad news to have Lithuania’s name associated with such events that took place five years back. Any reference to Lithuania in this context is no good in terms of the international context”.

“The Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs denies any rumours or fiction about secret US prisons that allegedly operated in the territory of Lithuania,” the ministry’s spokesman Rolandas Kacinskas told BNS on Friday morning.

“I heard the report yesterday. It is news to me. Over my term in office, nobody has spoken to me and I have not heard from anyone. I do not know whether it is a myth of a conscious provocation but this is something I do not know about,” the former President Adamkus told Delfi.lt on August 21.

“I can make an official statement – this is the first time I’ve heard about it. As the then prime minister, I did not know anything about such things in Lithuania. This is a fantasy,” the former Prime Minister Brazauskas said in comment of the ABC News report.

The former Army Chief Gen. Tutkus and the former Seimas Speaker Mr Paulauskas has also denied those reports.