CIA black sites

Following the September 11 attacks of 2001 and subsequent War on Terror, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) established a "Detention and Interrogation Program" that included a network of clandestine extrajudicial detention centers, officially known as "black sites", to detain, interrogate, and often torture suspected enemy combatants, usually with the acquiescence, if not direct collaboration, of the host government.^[3]

CIA black sites systematically employed torture in the form of "enhanced interrogation techniques" of detainees, most of whom had been illegally abducted and forcibly transferred. Known locations included Afghanistan, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania, and Thailand.^[4] Black sites were part of a broader American-led global program that included facilities operated by foreign governments—most commonly Syria, Egypt, and Jordan—as well as the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which housed those deemed "illegal enemy combatants"^[5] under a presidential military order.

The existence and specific locations of black sites were known to only a handful of U.S. officials—in some cases limited to just the U.S. president and senior intelligence officers in the host countries.^[6] As early as 2002, various human rights organizations and new media reported on secret detention facilities.^[7] In November 2005, the American daily newspaper The Washington Post was the first major publication to reveal a "hidden global internment network" operated by the CIA in cooperation with several foreign governments.^[7] The following year, U.S. President George W. Bush acknowledged that there had been CIA program that utilized secret prisons but claimed that detainees were not mistreated or tortured.^[8][9] Though the black sites had effectively ended in 2006, the Bush Administration never disclosed specific details regarding their location, conditions, and activities.

On February 14, 2007, the European Parliament adopted a report finding that several EU member states had cooperated with the CIA's extraordinary rendition program and implicating Poland and Romania in hosting secret CIA-run detention centers.^[3][10] In January 2009, amid growing domestic and international criticism, U.S. President Barack Obama formally ended the use of black sites and the detention and torture of terrorism suspects,^[11] albeit without repudiating nor ending extraordinary renditions.^[12] A 2010 study by the United Nations found that since 2001, there had been a "progressive and determined elaboration of a comprehensive and coordinated system of secret detention" involving the U.S. and other governments "in almost all regions of the world".^[13]

Following a five-year investigation, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee published a summary report in 2014 concluding that the CIA had routinely conducted "brutal" and ineffective interrogations of detainees at its black sites and repeatedly misled federal officials and the public about their existence and activities;^[14] the CIA responded acknowledging "failings" in the program but denying any intentional misrepresentations.^[14]

In 2014, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) was the first judicial body in the world to confirm the existence of CIA black sites, finding that Poland had allowed the CIA to detain and torture two suspects on its soil.^[15] Later that year, the Polish government admitted that it had hosted black sites,^[16] and subsequent reports determined that the country was arguably the most important component of the CIA's global detention network.^[17] A 2018 ruling by the ECtHR likewise found Romania and Lithuania responsible for the torture and abuse of prisoners that occurred in CIA black sites on their territories.^[18]