Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States, in the context of the early twenty-first century War on Terrorism, refers to foreign nationals the United States detains outside of the legal process required within United States legal jurisdiction. In this context, the

U.S. government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a fede ...

is maintaining torture centers, called black sites, operated by both known and secret intelligence agencies.http://assembly.coe.int/CommitteeDocs/2007/EMarty_20070608_NoEmbargo.pdf Such black sites were later confirmed by reports from journalists, investigations, and from men who had been imprisoned and tortured there, and later released after being tortured until the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

was comfortable they had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to hide. Of these prisoners being held by the U.S., some were suspected of being from the senior ranks of

al Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets in various countr ...

, referred to in U.S.

military terms A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

as "high value detainees." According to the

Swiss Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina *Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses *Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports *Swiss Internation ...

senator Dick Marty's reports on ''Secret Detentions and Illegal Transfers of Detainees involving Council of Europe Member States'', about a hundred persons had been kidnapped by the CIA on European territory and subsequently rendered to countries where they were tortured. Former

Secretary of Defense A defence minister or minister of defence is a cabinet official position in charge of a ministry of defense, which regulates the armed forces in sovereign states. The role of a defence minister varies considerably from country to country; in som ...

Donald Rumsfeld Donald Henry Rumsfeld (July 9, 1932 – June 29, 2021) was an American politician, government official and businessman who served as Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under president Gerald Ford, and again from 2001 to 2006 under Presi ...

, had described the men detained in Camp Delta at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as "the worst of the worst.", despite concerns about the mental capacity of several of the detainees. But, before September 2006, many of those detainees suspected of having the highest intelligence value were not detained at Guantanamo, but were held at CIA's black sites in Eastern Europe and other countries, including Afghanistan. In August 2010, it was reported that four high-value detainees: Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, had first been transferred to Guantanamo on September 24, 2003. They were held at "

Strawberry Fields The garden strawberry (or simply strawberry; ''Fragaria × ananassa'') is a widely grown hybrid species of the genus ''Fragaria'', collectively known as the strawberries, which are cultivated worldwide for their fruit. The fruit is widely app ...

", a secret camp in the facility constructed for their detention. Worried that a pending Supreme Court decision on habeas corpus rights might go against the Bush administration and compel releasing the men's names and other details, the CIA took back custody of the four men and moved them out of Guantanamo on March 27, 2004. The United States Supreme Court ruled in ''

Rasul v. Bush ''Rasul v. Bush'', 542 U.S. 466 (2004), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that foreign nationals held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp could petition federal courts for writs of ''habeas corpus ...

'' (2004) that detainees at

Guantanamo Bay detention camp The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guant ...

had the '' habeas corpus'' right to challenge their detentions before an impartial tribunal. As a result, the US allegedly continued to hold many

ghost detainees Ghost detainee is a term used in the executive branch of the United States government to designate a person held in a detention center, whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous.Military Commissions Act of 2006, which included provisions preventing detainees from using ''habeas corpus'' petitions outside the newly authorized system of military tribunals.

Ghost detainees

Ghost detainee Ghost detainee is a term used in the executive branch of the United States government to designate a person held in a detention center, whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous.extrajudicial prisoners whose identities have not been revealed and whose families (and frequently, governments) have not been informed of their status. They are deprived of all legal rights. Ghost detainees' identities, and capture, have been kept secret. As such they are a subset of extrajudicial prisoners, which includes all the detainees who were held in Guantanamo, etc..

Suspects held by US civilian intelligence agencies

High-value detainees

On September 6, 2006,

U.S. President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

confirmed, for the first time, that the

had held "high-value detainees" in secret CIA prisons. He also announced that 14 senior captives were being transferred from CIA custody to military custody at Guantanamo Bay. He said that these 14 captives could expect to face charges before Guantanamo military commissions. Critics, and elements of the FBI, had long speculated that the captives held in the secret facilities had been subjected to actual torture. They said that evidence derived from such interrogation techniques was not admissible in court and could not be used to prosecute the men.

Other captives in custody

American intelligence officials have made public the names of some of the suspects the CIA has reported to have been held. The capture of other detainees is not acknowledged. According to the US military, this is in order to spread disorder among their opponents, and fear among those who might be considering supporting them.

Legal status of detainees

Shortly after the

Invasion of Afghanistan In late 2001, the United States and its close allies invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban government. The invasion's aims were to dismantle al-Qaeda, which had executed the September 11 attacks, and to deny it a safe base of operations ...

, the Bush administration announced a policy that combatants captured "on the battlefield" in Afghanistan would not be afforded the protections of

POW A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war ...

status as described in the Geneva Conventions. This policy triggered debate both within and outside of the US government. The Bush administration claimed that the Geneva Conventions signed by the US protected only the fighters of recognized states, thus disqualifying al Qaeda fighters from these privileges as per the Bush administration's views. They argued that, since the Taliban was not a legitimate government either, their combatants did not qualify either. They saw Afghanistan as a "failed state," one without a legitimate government.

Classifying captives as illegal combatants

The Bush administration categorized such captives as "

illegal combatants An unlawful combatant, illegal combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent is a person who directly engages in armed conflict in violation of the laws of war and therefore is claimed not to be protected by the Geneva Conventions. The Internati ...

." These terms are not explicitly used in the Geneva Conventions, but the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 defines the term " lawful combatant", from which the term 'unlawful combatant' is derived. The Convention obliges signatories to afford captured lawful combatants significant rights and protections. Such captives are entitled to be classified as

prisoners of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold priso ...

(POW). Internal critics within the US military and US government argue that failing to afford POW protections to combatants captured in the global war on terror would endanger American military personnel when they were captured in current and future conflicts. Other critics argue that classifying all combatants as illegal combatants is in violation of Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention, which describes how a captor should treat combatants who are suspected of violating the Geneva Conventions such that they strip themselves of its protections. Article 5 says that combatants suspected of violations of the Conventions are to be afforded POW protection until the captors have convened a " competent tribunal." However, the Conventions never explicitly impose a limitation regarding the detention of detainees without trial during and after an armed conflict. The Bush administration expanded the criteria for classifying captives as illegal combatants. Individuals captured around the world are now classified as such if US intelligence officials believe they have sufficient evidence to tie the individual to

Islamic terrorism Islamic terrorism (also known as Islamist terrorism or radical Islamic terrorism) refers to terrorist acts with religious motivations carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists. Incidents and fatalities f ...

. In ''

'' (2004), the US Supreme Court ruled that detainees held by the United States did have the '' habeas corpus'' right to challenge their detentions before a competent tribunal. This decision led the Bush administration to bolster the prevalence of black sites overseas.

Use of interrogation techniques

The US intelligence community has debated what techniques should be used on the detainees. The debate was triggered over the interrogation of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, described as the first senior al Qaeda captive. It was reported that initially his interrogation was being conducted by the FBI because they had the most experience interrogating criminal suspects. Their interrogation approach was based on building rapport with suspects and they did not use coercive techniques. They argued that coercive techniques produced unreliable false confessions, and that using coercive techniques would mean that the evidence they gathered could not be used by the prosecution in a trial in the US judicial system. Fear and desire for actionable intelligence led the administration to legal opinions (the Torture Memos, including the

Bybee memo A set of legal memoranda known as the "Torture Memos" (officially the Memorandum Regarding Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside The United States) were drafted by John Yoo as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the U ...

) by the

Office of Legal Counsel The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) is an office in the United States Department of Justice that assists the Attorney General's position as legal adviser to the President and all executive branch agencies. It drafts legal opinions of the Attorney ...

, United States Department of Justice, issued to the CIA in August 2002 authorizing the use of 12

enhanced interrogation techniques "Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" is a euphemism for the program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. A ...

(since 2009, these have been legally defined as torture and prohibited from use) with detained suspects. Similarly, on March 14, 2003, five days before the US started its

2003 invasion of Iraq The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 ...

, the OLC issued a memo to

William J. Haynes William James "Jim" Haynes II (born March 30, 1958) is an American lawyer and was General Counsel of the Department of Defense during much of 43rd President George W. Bush's administration and his war on terror. Haynes resigned as general counsel ...

General Counsel of the United States Department of Defense A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". OE ...

, concluding that federal laws against the use of torture and other coercion did not apply to interrogations overseas. In reaction to the release of the abuse pictures from

Abu Ghraib Abu Ghraib (; ar, أبو غريب, ''Abū Ghurayb'') is a city in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq, located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000 (2003). The old road t ...

in Iraq in April and May 2004, and the leak that summer of the

, the administration advised agencies to suspend actions based on those memos. CIA suspended the use of enhanced interrogation techniques.

Legal justification for the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques"

Secretary Rumsfeld assured the world that the detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base were going to be treated in a manner consistent with the treatment of Geneva Convention POWs. In 2004, confidential memos surfaced that discussed the limits to how much pain, discomfort and fear could be used in the interrogation of detainees in the global war on terror. The memos showed that debate within the Bush administration had been resolved in favor of what was later legally determined to be torture.

Legislative challenges to interrogation policy

In 2005, US Senator

John McCain John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American politician and United States Navy officer who served as a United States senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018. He previously served two terms ...

, a former POW from the Vietnam War, attached a passage to a military spending bill that would proscribe inhumane treatment of detainees and restrict US officials to use only the interrogation techniques in the US Army's field manual on interrogation. Ninety of the one hundred Senators supported this amendment. On Thursday, October 20, 2005, Vice President

Dick Cheney Richard Bruce Cheney ( ; born January 30, 1941) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. He is currently the oldest living former U ...

proposed a change to McCain. Cheney tried to get McCain to limit the proscription to just military personnel, thus allowing CIA personnel the freedom to use harsher techniques. McCain declined to accept Cheney's suggestion.

U.S. Government denial of allegations of mistreatment

The United States government, through the

State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...

, makes periodic reports to the United Nations Committee Against Torture. In October 2005, the report focused on pretrial detention of suspects in the war on terrorism, including those held in Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan. This was the first official response of the U.S. government to allegations that prisoners were mistreated at

. The report denies the allegations. However, the report does not address detainees held elsewhere by the

. Recently, the Director of the CIA, Michael Hayden has acknowledged that some detainees had been subject to waterboarding, in accordance with several OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) memos. General Hayden states that in February 2008, waterboarding was not part of the authorized interrogation techniques for U.S. agents. The

Inspector General An inspector general is an investigative official in a civil or military organization. The plural of the term is "inspectors general". Australia The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (Australia) (IGIS) is an independent statutory off ...

investigated cases in which men were captured and transported through "

erroneous rendition Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism for state-sponsored forcible abduction in another jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The phrase usually refers to a United States-led program used during the War on Terror, which had the purpose ...

s." There were said to be 3,000 individuals who were held in CIA custody.

Geneva Conventions compliance

On July 20, 2007, President Bush issued an executive order officially banning torture of POWs by intelligence officials.

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

points out that the Bush administration has narrowly defined torture under the

, at the time, the only known one of the Torture Memos. While the US is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, it has failed to ratify that portion of the Geneva Convention,

Protocol I Protocol I (sometimes referred to as Additional Protocol I or AP 1) is a 1977 amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions relating to the protection of victims of ''international conflicts'', extending to "armed conflicts in which peoples are ...

, which would grant such persons POW status as the detainees at Guantanamo. The US is one of only six countries that have not.

Individuals identified as being tortured by the CIA without authorization

Location of the suspects held by US civilian intelligence agencies

References

External links

"Outsourcing torture"
Jane Mayer, '' The New Yorker'', February 14, 2005
"A Tortured Debate"
'' Newsweek'', June 21, 2005
"We Don't Want a Hanoi Hilton"
''The Washington Post'', October 27, 2005

''The Washington Post'', November 2, 2005

''The Washington Post'', November 3, 2005
"Sources Tell ABC News Top Al Qaeda Figures Held in Secret CIA Prisons"
'' ABC News'' December 5, 2005
"A list of 12 high-value targets housed by the CIA"
'' ABC News'', December 5, 2005
"CIA 'closes terror prisons'"
''

news.com.au news.com.au is an Australian website owned by News Corp Australia. It had 9.6 million unique readers in April 2019 and covers national and international news, lifestyle, travel, entertainment, technology, finance, and sport. Staff The organiza ...

'', December 6, 2005
"Victims Could Sue for Human Rights in European Court of Justice"
''

Der Spiegel ''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

'' December 6, 2005
Center for Constitutional Rights website, representing detainees and working against other injustices "Tortured Justice: Using Coerced Evidence to Prosecute Terrorist Suspects" (2008)
Human Rights First
"In Pursuit of Justice; Prosecuting Terrorism Cases in the Federal Courts" (2009)
Human Rights First
"Undue Process: An Examination of Detention and Trials of Bagram Detainees in Afghanistan in April 2009" (2009)
Human Rights First {{WoTPrisoners Counterterrorism in the United States