Yesterday, the Senate Intelligence Committee announced that it passed the 2009 Intelligence Authorization bill by a bipartisan vote of 10-5 and that the bill includes a provision requiring the Red Cross be made aware of, and given access to, anyone detained by any element of the Intelligence Community. Here's some background on secret detentions that explains why this provision is important.

Secret detention and abusive interrogations violate a host of human rights norms. Enforced disappearances—encompassing arbitrary, secret, and incommunicado detention—and torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are prohibited by international human rights laws.[7] The practice of enforced disappearance incorporates threats to numerous human rights, including the right to life, the prohibition on torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, the right to liberty and security of the person, and the right to fair and public trial.[8]

The Numbers

The United States government has not acknowledged the exact number of people in the CIA detention and interrogation program. The closest official number is based on CIA director General Michael Hayden’s remarks in 2007 at the Council of Foreign Relations during which he stated that, “Since [the CIA detention and interrogation program] began with the capture of Abu Zubaidah in the spring of 2002, fewer than 100 people have been detained at CIA’s facilities.”[9]
The Program

Although CIA personnel have described aspects of the program to some journalists and some information has been learnt though former CIA prisoners, much remains unknown about the scope of the program, the precise locations of the detention facilities, the treatment of detainees, and the cooperation and complicity of other governments.

Since the inception of the program, the CIA reportedly operated detention centers in Afghanistan, the island of Diego-Garcia, Djibouti, Thailand, Jordan, Morocco, Eastern Europe, including Poland and Romania, and Guantánamo Bay. [10] It is unclear where the CIA is currently operating a secret facility.

In 2005, the Washington Post reported that some 30 “major terrorism suspects” were held at high-security prisons operated exclusively by CIA personnel, while an additional 70 less important suspects were transferred to prisons run by other countries’ intelligence services. The major suspects, also known as “High Value Targets,” were alleged top al-Qaeda leaders, not “foot soldiers.”

Details about the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program also emerged in 2004-2005 from former prisoners. In June 2005, Khalid el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, told German police about his kidnapping, abuse, and secret detention. El-Masri was arrested by Macedonian agents, held secretly for a month in Macedonia, and then picked by U.S. agents and flown to Afghanistan and held by the CIA for four months.

The largest CIA prison in Afghanistan was code-named the Salt Pit. It was also the CIA’s substation and was first housed in an old brick factory outside Kabul. The Salt Pit was protected by surveillance cameras, it was moved inside Bagram Air Base, but then relocated off the base.
In 2005, three Yemeni former CIA detainees told Amnesty International about their experience in CIA detention,[11] and a number of Guantánamo detainees told their legal counsel that prior to transfer to Guantánamo they had been held in a secret “dark prison” in Kabul, Afghanistan and interrogated by U.S. officials.[12] Detainee accounts have similar characteristics, including description of prison guards and interrogators with American-accented English, uniformed masked guards, flights in which detainees were placed in diapers, and various forms of physical and mental abuse.

ABC News on November 18, 2005, also reported that several CIA officials told ABC that the CIA had operated a secret facility in Kabul, and had voiced concerns about the interrogations there.[13] CIA officials authorized six techniques for use against detainees with “high-level” intelligence value, including long-term sleep deprivation, exposure to cold for more than 40 hours, and “waterboarding.” The officials, who spoke on conditions of anonymity, told ABC that the CIA had authorized these techniques in March 2002 and that they were used at the Kabul facility and elsewhere.

The Washington Post reported that following the capture of Abu Zubaida in March 2002 in Pakistan, the CIA took him to a Thailand.[14] According to the Post, former and current intelligence officials said that the Thailand detention center included underground interrogation cells. Six months later, September 11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh was also captured in Pakistan and flown to Thailand. But after published reports revealed the existence of the site in June 2003, Thai officials insisted the CIA shut it down, and the two prisoners were moved elsewhere.

In November 2005, Poland and Romania were identified as having hosted CIA detention centers. The Washington Post, citing U.S. government concerns, did not reveal the identities of the two countries, but referred to them generically as “eastern European democracies.” [15] Human Rights Watch, which had conducted its own research on the issue, reported that the countries in question are Poland and Romania.[16] On December 5, 2005, ABC News also identified the two countries and reported that following the revelations of the detention centers, the sites had been closed and suspects had been transferred to CIA facilities in Morocco. The ABC story also reported that the 11 suspects detained in Poland had been subjected to harsh interrogation techniques.[17]

The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly initiated an investigation in November 2005 about the CIA sites in Europe. In a report in June 2007, the investigation concluded that there is “now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania.” It also found that prisoners in these facilities were subjected to “interrogation techniques tantamount to torture.”[18]

Information about the CIA program continues to unfold. In March 2008, Amnesty International reported about another Yemeni man who was in CIA custody in Afghanistan and suffered abuse in custody.[19] Human Rights Watch in 2007 reported about a Jordanian held initially in Pakistan where he was abused by Pakistani officials and interrogated by U.S. officials and then transferred to CIA custody in Afghanistan.[20]

[1] ACLU, “CIA Finally Acknowledges Existence of Presidential Order on Detention Facilities Abroad,” November 14, 2006.
[2] “Leahy ‘brushed off’ on secret terror docs,” UPI, January 3, 2007.
[3] White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “President Discusses Creation of Military Commissions to Try Suspected Terrorists,” September 6, 2006.
[4] Dafna Linzer, “CIA Held Al-Qaeda Suspect Secretly: Officials Disclose That Use of Overseas Prisons Resumed,” Washington Post, April 28, 2008.
[5] “U.S. Defense Dept: Top Terrorist Nabbed,” CBS News, March 14, 2008.
[6] Transcript of Conference Call With Senior Administration Officials on the Executive Order Interpreting Common Article Three, July 20, 2007, available at http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/07-20-2007/0004629772&EDATE= (quoting a senior administration official affirming that ICRC access is not a part of Common Article 3). See also Rosa Brooks, Dark Powers, the Sequel, LA Times, July 27, 2007.
[7] Article 2 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (the Convention on Enforced Disappearance) defines “enforced disappearance” as: “the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law.” The Convention on Enforced Disappearances was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on December 20, 2006, opened for signature on February 6, 2007.
[8] International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, article 6(1), 7, 9, and 14(1).
[9] Remarks of Central Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden at the Council on Foreign Relations (as prepared for delivery), September 7, 2007, http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/dcia090707.html; see also Human Rights Watch, Cage Prisoners, Reprieve, NYU Center for Law and Global Justice, Amnesty International, Off the Record: U.S. Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the ‘War on Terror’, June 2007 (citing 39 persons who at one point or another were in secret CIA custody and the whereabouts of most are unknown).
[10] Dana Priest, “CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons: Debate Is Growing Within Agency About Legality and Morality of Overseas System Set Up After 9/11,” Washington Post, November 2, 2005; Amnesty International, Secret Detention in CIA Black Sites, November 2005.
[11] Amnesty International, “Secret Detention in CIA ‘Black Sites.’”
[12] Human Rights Watch, “U.S. Operated Secret ‘Dark Prison’ in Kabul,” December 19, 2005.
[13] Brian Ross and Richard Esposito, “CIA's Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described: Sources Say Agency's Tactics Lead to Questionable Confessions, Sometimes to Death,” ABC News, Nov. 18, 2005.
[14] Dana Priest, “CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons,” Washington Post.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Watch Statement on U.S. Secret Detention Facilities in Europe, November 7, 2005, available at http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/11/07/usint11995.htm
[17] “List of 12 Operatives Held in CIA Prisons,” ABC News, December 5, 2005.
[18] Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, Alleged Secret Detentions and Unlawful Inter-State Transfers Involving Council of Europe Member States, June 7, 2006.
[19] BBC, “Yemeni Describes CIA Secret Jails,” March 14, 2008.
[20] Human Rights Watch, Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention,” February 2007. The CIA’s Secret Detention Program