Following the September 11 attacks of 2001 and subsequent war on terror, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) established a "Detention and Interrogation Program" that included a network of clandestine extrajudicial detention centres, officially known as "black sites", to detain, interrogate, and often torture suspected enemy combatants, usually with the acquiescence, if not direct collaboration, of the host government.
CIA black sites systematically employed torture in the form of "enhanced interrogation techniques" of detainees, most of whom had been illegally abducted and forcibly transferred. Known locations included Afghanistan, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania, and Thailand. Black sites were part of a broader American-led global program that included facilities operated by foreign governments—most commonly Syria, Egypt, and Jordan—as well as the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which housed those deemed "illegal enemy combatants" under a presidential military order.
