ICRC Assessment of Detention and EITs
All of the fourteen [High Value Detainees interviewed] were subjected to a process of ongoing transfers to places of detention in unknown locations and continuous solitary confinement and incommunicado detention throughout the entire period of their detention. The fourteen were placed outside the protection of the law during the time they spent in the CIA detention programme. The totality of the circumstances in which they were held effectively amounted to an arbitrary deprivation of liberty and enforced disappearance, in contravention of international law.
Moreover, and in addition to the continuous solitary confinement and incommunicado detention which itself was a form of ill-treatment, twelve of the fourteen alleged that they were subjected to systematic physical and/or psychological ill-treatment. This was a consequence of both the treatment and the material conditions which formed part of the interrogation regime, as well as the overall detention regime. This regime was clearly designed to undermine human dignity and to create a sense of futility by inducing, in many cases, severe physical and mental pain and suffering, with the aim of obtaining compliance and extracting information, resulting in exhaustion, depersonalisation and dehumanisation.
The allegations of ill-treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singularly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill-treatment, either singularly or in combination, constituted cruel inhuman or degrading treatment.
