A collection of air traffic control records, billing documents and other forms of flight data, collected by The Rendition Project during its investigation into the CIA torture programme.
The CIA torture programme consisted of a global network of secret prisons (so-called ‘black sites’) established for the purposes of detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects – in secret, indefinitely, and under the most extreme conditions. These sites did not exist in isolation from one another, but rather formed a network of secret detention facilities which operated across four continents, with individual sites operating for varying periods within the overall programme. Rendition aircraft – civilian aircraft operated by or on behalf of the CIA – flew hundreds of flights to transfer prisoners, interrogators and other US officials between the sites. Further rendition operations involving these aircraft transferred prisoners to the custody of partner intelligence agencies, again for the poses of secret detention and interrogation under torture.
These flights were undertaken in secret and, where they carried prisoners, they entailed multiple violations of international law. During the renditions, prisoners were drugged, shackled, hooded and strapped to stretchers by rendition teams dressed entirely in black and communicating only in sign language. Some were placed in coffins during the flight; others were beaten repeatedly throughout. The procedures were designed deliberately, in the words of one CIA ‘background paper’, to create ‘significant apprehension in the [detainee] because of the enormity and suddenness of the change in the environment, the uncertainty about what will happen next, and the potential [they] might have of US custody.’
Our investigation with The Rendition Project involved the collection of large amounts of data relating to the companies and aircraft involved in the torture programme. This included contracting and billing documentation passed between companies; registration and leasing documentation for particular aircraft; and flight data (information that provides geolocational data on specific aircraft at specific times). Overall, these come from a large number of sources, including Eurocontrol (a pan-European, intergovernmental air traffic management organisation); the US Federal Aviation Administration; a number of national civil aviation, border guard and airport authorities across Europe; the findings of parliamentary investigations at a national level; hotel records; eyewitness accounts; and documentation secured from within the CIA torture program.
Our resulting CIA Flights Database, with tens of thousands of individual data points, was key to uncovering the movements (and therefore locations) of individual prisoners, as well as the locations and operational periods of the black sites where secret detention and torture took place.
Our final report, CIA Torture Unredacted, provides more details on the construction of the database and the ways in which it was used to uncover the contours of the torture programme.
