The CIA black sites were among the most secretive institutions created after 9/11. This episode explains how the hidden detention network developed, why the CIA began holding terrorism suspects outside ordinary prisons, how extraordinary rendition moved detainees between countries and what official investigations later revealed about interrogation methods inside the facilities.






It follows the cases of Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Gul Rahman and wrongly detained prisoners, while separating established facts from the long-running dispute over whether coercive interrogation produced uniquely valuable intelligence. It also traces how the programme was exposed, how European courts established the involvement of host countries, why President Barack Obama ordered CIA detention facilities closed in 2009 and what US law now says about interrogation.






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