Off the Grid

Nine CIA ‘Black Sites’ Where Detainees Were Tortured

Six days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, President George W. Bush issued a directive allowing the CIA to secretly detain and interrogate prisoners at clandestine sites located around the world, cut off from communication with legal counsel, family, and everyone else. The locations of eight of these sites, along with descriptions of some of the deeply disturbing practices there, were included in today’s release of the so-called “torture report” — the heavily redacted executive summary of a senate committee study of the CIA’s Bush-era interrogation program.

The report identifies the locations of the CIA black sites by color codes and redacts the country names, but previous reports by NGOs, European agencies, media reports and detainee statements can identify most of the locations. The sites are located in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Thailand, and a secret site on the Guantanamo Naval Base, known as Strawberry Fields, – “forever.”

Margot Williams, The Intercept‘s research editor for investigations, compiled the locations and, with research editor Josh Begley, placed them on the map below:


Photo: Google Maps

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