Reuters' Randall Mikkelsen reports today that the CIA's Director Leon Panetta says the agency
will decommission the infamous "black sites" where terrorism suspects were interrogated with harsh techniques that included waterboarding.
The article says in a letter to Congress, Panetta reported
'CIA no longer operates detention facilities or black sites and has proposed a plan to decommission the remaining sites. I have directed our Agency personnel to take charge of the decommissioning process and have further directed that the contracts for site security be promptly terminated.'
In July 2008, PHR called for a full trans-Atlantic investigation by Congress and the Parliament of the United Kingdom in the wake of a revelation by TIME magazine that the US covertly used Diego Garcia, a British island off the coast of India, as a top secret CIA detention center. PHR also demanded that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) be given immediate access to all detainees that may still have been held at "black" site locations.