Some justice for torture

Between 2003 and 2006, Romania and Lithuania hosted CIA "black sites", secret extrajudicial prisons where alleged terrorists were rendered and tortured by America. Today, the European Court of Human Rights declared unequivocally that those prisons were illegal, and ordered their host governments to pay damages to two of their victims:

European judges have ruled that Lithuania and Romania violated the rights of two terror suspects by allowing the CIA to torture them in secret prisons within their borders.

The terror suspects — both said to be affiliated with al-Qaeda — were captured following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and they are now being held by the US at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility in Cuba.

At the time of the torture of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the CIA was operating secret prisons in several locations, including within Lithuania and Romania.

Lithuania and Romania have both been ordered by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to pay €100,000 (£88,000; $117,000) in damages to the two men. The court was unable to gain access to speak with the two men at Guantanamo.

Which is good, so far as it goes. But firstly, an EU government should not need the ECHR to know that hosting a secret CIA torture centre is illegal. And secondly, the officials and politicians who approved that hosting have not been prosecuted or held to account in any way. Which means there is no incentive for them or their successors not to do it again in future. And of course the US torturers and the officials who enabled them are all still walking free as well.

If we want to end torture, we need to prosecute these people. Until we've done that, there's no real justice.

A loss for austerity and a constitutional crisis in Lithuania

Lithuanians went to the polls in the second round of parliamentary elections on Sunday - and decisively gave their NeoLiberal government the boot. The Social Democrats look set to take power, with the support of the Labour and Order and Justice parties. They've promised to raise the minimum wage, tax the rich, and delay entry to the Euro to avoid Greek-style crucifixion. But there's a problem: the President is threatening to veto the government before it even begins:

Lithuania's president has threatened to block the new coalition being formed by three parties after a general election.

President Dalia Grybauskaite said she could not accept a government that included the Labour party, which came third in Sunday's poll but faces allegations of vote buying.

Labour was in advanced coalition talks with the first-placed Social Democrats, and the smaller Order and Justice.

The ruling conservatives looked certain to be ousted until the president spoke.

Details of the alleged vote-buying are here. They are currently being investigated, and the Labour party has made it clear that anyone involved will be expelled (of course, they would say that). So, there are definite questions about whether such a party is a fit partner for government. At the same time, the Lithuanian Constitution is crystal clear: it is not the President's place to say. Her job is simply to appoint as Prime Minister the person with the confidence of the Seimas, and she has no discretion in this. If the Seimas' choice for Prime Minister has the backing of the labour party, she has to accept that. If they then want Labour MPs appointed as Ministers, she has to appoint them. If she doesn't want to, she can resign. In this respect, Lithuania's president is an administrator, not a political actor, and certainly not a judge or prosecutor.

But then, this is all about being a political actor. Lithuania's president is a member of the formerly-ruling conservatives, and its hard to see this as anything other than an attempt to keep her friends in power and thwart the will of the people. It will be interesting to see whether she gets away with it.

(Meanwhile, the report of the OSCE's election monitors should eventually go up here)

Lithuania votes

Lithuanians went to the polls today in the first round of parliamentary elections - and have voted resoundingly against their neoLiberal, pro-austerity government which had plunged them into a Greek-style austerity-induced recession. But there's a catch: Lithuania uses Supplementary Member, with the party and constituency votes held on different days. So, their unfair electoral system could still produce a perverse result due to the electorate vote.

The second round of voting will be held on October 28.