Legacy of the “Dark Side”: The Cost of Unlawful U.S. Detentions and Interrogations Post-9/11

Paper

This paper assesses the massive costs of U.S. unlawful transfers, secret detentions, and torture after September 11 – to the rights of victims and suspects, to U.S. taxpayers, and to U.S. moral authority and counterterrorism efforts worldwide, ultimately jeopardizing universal human rights protections for everyone.

The costs of the U.S. post-9/11 wars include a legacy of extraordinary renditions, unlawful detentions, and torture.

The CIA orchestrated a system of black sites throughout the world in which it rendered and secretly detained at least 119 foreign Muslim men, and tortured at least 39.
The military also held thousands of foreign Muslim men and in some cases boys in detention centers, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Nearly 800 men and boys have been held in Guantánamo, and 39 remain detained to this day, 27 without criminal charges.
Cases of U.S.-facilitated indefinite detention and rendition continued under the Obama and Trump administrations.

The authors call on the Biden administration to close the Guantánamo prison and enact significant legal and policy reforms to end further abuses. Reforms should include far greater transparency about crimes that U.S. forces committed and accountability at the highest levels, as well as robust efforts to address religious, racial, and ethnic bias in counterterrorism efforts.

About the Authors

Letta Tayler

Associate Director in the Crisis and Conflict Division of Human Rights Watch

taylerl@hrw.org

Letta Tayler is an Associate Director in the Crisis and Conflict Division of Human Rights Watch, where she leads the division's work on terrorism and counterterrorism. Her focus includes United Nations counterterrorism policy, US drone strikes and other lethal targeting, and measures relating to foreign ISIS suspects and family members. Tayler has worked in more than three dozen countries as a human rights defender and in her previous capacity as a journalist. She has presented her findings to international and regional organizations including the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, and the European Parliament. Tayler’s work has been featured in media including The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, CNN, Fresh Air, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now!, and Elle. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Barnard College and a master’s in international human rights law from the University of Oxford.
Elisa Epstein

Law Student, Advocacy Officer

elisacepstein@gmail.com

Elisa Epstein is currently a law student at the University of Chicago. Until August 2021, she was the Washington Advocacy Officer at Human Rights Watch where she conducted advocacy with the US government on national security and foreign policy. Prior to that, she worked at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, and held internships with the Department of Defense and other organizations. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago.