The Hope of Lithuania

I find it hard to understand the logic of Dalia Grybauskaitė, Lithuania’s President and it is not just because I don’t speak Lithuanian.  On Tuesday Grybauskaitė wrote to President Obama congratulating him on winning the Nobel Peace Prize, saying in her letter to him, “Your call for the new beginning where America leads, but also works together with each and everybody to achieve what is a common goal has been answered.”

But when it comes to closing Guantánamo Bay, Grybauskaitė appears to be letting the beleaguered President’s calls for help reverberate through the Lithuanian forests with no reply. Until recently, there were high hopes that Lithuania would accept some of the prisoners who, despite being cleared for release, remain trapped in Guantánamo because they cannot return to their countries of origin for fear of torture. These are men like Reprieve's client Ahmed Belbacha, a 40 year old trained accountant from Algeria who lived for over two years in the U.K.

In September the country’s Foreign Ministry was “in talks” with United States officials regarding resettlement and said that the country could take some prisoners. What appears to have scuppered Grybauskaitė’s promises are recent suggestions that Lithuania hosted “high value detainees” in one of the CIA’s sinister “black sites” near Vilnius until late 2005. Until these allegations have been disproven, says Grybauskaitė, the country cannot act. The strange logic continues. I would have thought these allegations of complicity would add to, rather than diminish, the case for Lithuania stepping up for Guantánamo’s refugees, but Grybauskaitė seems to disagree.

As most Western European governments fail either to investigate past crimes in the ‘war on terror’ or follow through on their previous condemnation of Guantánamo by offering a safe haven to its forgotten prisoners, Lithuania has a chance to stand out from the crowd.The country’s media have dubbed Grybauskaitė "the hope of Lithuania” – fingers crossed she’ll live up to her name.