“With the participation of at least 54 governments, the CIA secretly and extrajudicially transferred at least 119 foreign Muslims from one foreign country to another for incommunicado detention and harsh interrogation at various CIA black sites. At least 39 of the men were subjected to ‘waterboarding,’ ‘walling,’ ‘rectal feeding’ – a form of rape – and other forms of torture. The US military also held thousands of foreign Muslim security detainees and prisoners-of-war – including some women and boys – at its detention centers abroad including Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and its naval base at Guantánamo, and also subjected many to physical and psychological abuse.
As of January 6, 2022, the US was still detaining 39 of the nearly 800 men and boys it brought to Guantánamo from 2002 to 2008. Twenty-seven of those who remain have never been charged. Many lack adequate medical care and even access to their medical records, making the prison a living legacy of the rights violations spawned by 9/11. The military commission system created to prosecute suspects at Guantánamo is fundamentally flawed. As a result, the five prisoners accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks have yet to be brought to trial, depriving them of due process and the survivors and the families of the nearly 3,000 people who died in the attacks of their right to justice.”
– Letta Tayler and Elisa Epstein, “Legacy of the ‘Dark Side’- The Costs of Unlawful US Detentions and Interrogations Post-9/11,” hrw.org, January 9, 2022