A/HRC/13/42* page 45 those places.170 One of the consequences of this policy was that many detainees were kept secretly and without access to the protection accorded to those in custody, namely the protection of the Geneva Conventions, international human rights law, the United States Constitution and various other domestic laws. 102. The secret detention policy took many forms. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) established its own secret detention facilities to interrogate so-called “high value detainees”. It asked partners with poor human rights records to secretly detain and interrogate persons on its behalf. When the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq started, the United States secretly held persons in battlefield detention sites for prolonged periods of time. The present chapter therefore focuses on various secret detention sites and those held there, and also highlights examples of the complicity of other States. A. The “high-value detainee” programme and CIA secret detention facilities 103. On 17 September 2001, President Bush sent a 12-page memorandum to the Director of the CIA through the National Security Council, which authorized the CIA to detain terrorists and set up detention facilities outside the United States.171 Until 2005, when the United Nations sent its first of many communications regarding this programme to the Government of the United States, little was known about the extent and the details of the secret detention programme. Only in May 2009 could a definitive number of detainees in the programme be established. In a released, yet still redacted, memo, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stephen G. Bradbury stated that, to date, the CIA had taken custody of 94 detainees [redacted], and had employed enhanced techniques to varying degrees in the interrogations of 28 of those detainees.172 104. In the report of 2007 on his country visit to the United States (A/HRC/6/17/Add.3), the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism described what was known at that time of these “enhanced techniques” and how they were regarded: As a result of an apparent internal leak from the CIA, the media in the United States learned and published information about “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA in its interrogation of terrorist suspects and possibly other persons held because of 170 In its October 2007 submission to the Human Rights Committee, the Government reaffirmed its long-standing position that “the Covenant does not apply extraterritorially” (CCPR/C/USA/CO/3/Rev.1/Add.1), p. 2. 171 Sixth declaration of Marilyn A. Dorn, Information Review Officer, Central Intelligence Agency, 5 January 2007, available from www.aclu.org/pdfs/safefree/20070110/cia_dorn_declaration_items_1_29_61.pdf. 172 Stephen G. Bradbury, Memorandum re: application of United States obligations under article 16 of the Convention against Torture to certain techniques that may be used in the interrogation of high value al-Qaida detainees, 30 May 2005 (footnote, p. 5). Available from http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/olc_05302005_bradbury.pdf.