Secret Prisons

After 9/11, the CIA built and maintained a network of secret prisons across the globe for the detention of terrorism suspects who were often transported via ‘extraordinary rendition‘. Some facilities remain operational to this day. Since these ‘black sites’ operated outside of US borders and outside of US jurisdiction, evidence has shown that ‘rendered’ prisoners were thrust into a legal black hole and subjected to brutal torture and other human rights abuses.

CIA prison facilities have been uncovered in Afghanistan, Diego Garcia (British Indian Ocean Territory), Djibouti, Egypt and Syria, among others. In 2005, it emerged that the CIA was detaining prisoners in Europe, transporting them covertly through European airspace and airports.

Reprieve investigates extra-judicial detention and military detention in secret prisons around the world, working to reunite ‘disappeared’ prisoners with their human rights under US and international law. We are investigating the role of corporations in the illegal rendition, incarceration and torture of prisoners in the ‘war on terror’, as well as the complicity of European states, including Romania, Poland and Lithuania. In 2014, we secured a successful ruling in the European Court of Human Rights that Poland facilitated CIA torture in black sites – the first ruling on European complicity in the CIA torture program.