Counter-terror and security

In January, the Lithuanian Prosecutor General closed a criminal investigation into the alleged involvement of state officials in two secret CIA detention sites. The reasons he gave were the need to protect state secrets and that the statute of limitations had expired on the investigation of the officials abusing their authority.

In May, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture published a report on Lithuania, which included its inspection of the CIA detention sites. In September, NGOs presented new data about rendition flights to Lithuania. In October, however, in spite of the new information, the Prosecutor General refused to reopen the investigation.

• On 27 October, lawyers of Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian detained in Guantánamo Bay, filed a complaint in the European Court of Human Rights, alleging that he was unlawfully transferred to Lithuania in 2005, where he was tortured at a secret detention facility.

Discrimination – lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people

In June, following public pressure, a further amendment to the Law on Provision of Information to the Public came into force. It reversed the 2010 amendment, and banned discrimination in advertising and public broadcast on the basis of sexual orientation, as required under international law.

However, other legislation or proposals remained discriminatory. The parliamentary agenda published in September included amendments to the Code on Administrative Offences. These amendments covered fines for “denigrating constitutional moral values and the principles of family” as well as “organizing events contradicting social morality”. The same agenda proposed amendments to the Civil Code to ban gender reassignment surgery.

The Law on the Protection of Minors against the Detrimental Effect of Public Information remained in force. Any information which “denigrates family values”, or encourages marriage between anyone other than between a man and a woman, was banned from places accessible to children.