CIA black sites
Secret overseas CIA facilities where terrorism suspects were held without trial
CIA black sites is a term from US law and intelligence practice for the secret, overseas facilities that the US intelligence service, the CIA, established and operated as part of its so-called Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The facilities were not part of the ordinary US prison system and were not subject to normal judicial oversight. At these locations, individuals whom the CIA suspected of terrorism were detained, transported and interrogated without trial, legal representation or public scrutiny. The detentions took place in secret, and the authorities informed neither relatives, lawyers nor international bodies about where the detainees were held or under what conditions.
The interrogation methods used at black sites have since been the subject of extensive documentation and criticism. In its investigation of the program, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that the CIA used methods that included waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other forms of physical and psychological pressure — methods that critics, courts and international human rights bodies have characterised as torture.
In the following decades, the use of black sites became the subject of congressional inquiries, litigation and public debate about state accountability, secrecy and the limits of the rule of law. In cases such as the Abu Zubaydah case, the question of what the state may lawfully keep secret by invoking national security has proved central — including whether victims of abuse at black sites can seek judicial review before US courts at all.
On Krimidex the term is used in connection with documented state abuses, where the CIA's secret program forms the framework for serious violations of individual rights and international obligations, and where the question of legal accountability remains unresolved.
