It is no secret that the US military operates detention centres around the world for the interrogation of terror suspects. The treatment of prisoners in these places – including Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib in Iraq – has come in for intense scrutiny and evidence of human rights violations has been widely reported.
But less well-documented is the process by which terror suspects are sent by the United States for interrogation by security officials in other countries. This is known as “rendition” and is becoming increasingly controversial because many of these countries – including Syria and Egypt – are accused of using torture on prisoners, not least by the US State Department.
