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thumb|Photograph of the Salt Pit taken by [[Trevor Paglen in 2006]]

Salt Pit and Cobalt were the code names of an isolated clandestine CIA black site prison and interrogation center outside Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. It was located north of Kabul and was the location of a brick factory prior to the war in Afghanistan. The CIA adapted it for extrajudicial detention.

In the winter of 2005, the Salt Pit became known to the general public because of two incidents. In 2011, the Miami Herald indicated that the Salt Pit was the same facility that Guantanamo Bay detainees referred to as the dark prison—a fact subsequently confirmed in the CIA torture report.

Description

Although the initial plan called for the Afghan government to operate the site, it actually was overseen by the CIA from the start. The CIA authorized more than $200,000 for the construction of the prison in June 2002; the site became operational with the incarceration of Redha al-Najar in September 2002, although the first formal guidelines for interrogation and confinement at the site were signed by the Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet only in late January 2003. Ultimately, the prison housed, at one point or another, nearly half of the 119 detainees identified by the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.

The CIA used many different techniques and tactics to break down the detainees' minds, making them more willing to comply with interrogation. This is now identified with the Salt Pit.

The prisoners' details have been consistent, saying that the guards did not wear military uniforms—prompting Human Rights Watch to suggest it was run as a black site by the Central Intelligence Agency. One prisoner reported being threatened with rape. Two Afghan captives died there in 2005 and a Department of Defense investigation finally concluded they had been murdered, as some detainees had claimed.

  • Suffered brain damage from interrogators repeatedly slamming his head into a wall.

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! Laid Saidi

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  • Saidi worked for the Al-Haramain Foundation in Tanzania; captured 10 May 2003.
  • Was detained in "Salt Pit" at the same time as Khaled el-Masri, a German resident abducted while on vacation in North Macedonia.

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!Sanad al-Kazimi

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  • Alleges he was beaten with electric cables and attempted suicide three times in the prison.

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!Hayatullah

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  • Held in "the black prison" for forty days before being transferred to Bagram, Afghanistan, in 2007.
  • Reports that the walls of the prison are concrete blocks. Captives who had been held there a long time say they were originally plywood, painted black.
  • Believed the prison was near Bagram base, and was also called "Tor Jail".

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Death in custody

Gul Rahman is the only publicly known death from the Salt Pit. He was arrested and tortured because he was thought to be an Afghan militant. The recently assigned CIA case officer in charge of the prison directed the Afghan guards to strip Gul Rahman naked from the waist down, chain him to the floor of his unheated cell, and leave him overnight, according to the Associated Press. Rahman was captured in Islamabad on 29 October 2002. On the morning of 20 November 2002, he was found dead in his cell. A post-mortem examination determined that he had frozen to death. The Washington Post described the CIA camp commandant as "newly minted", on his first assignment. ABC News called the CIA camp commandant "a young, untrained junior officer". The Washington Posts sources noted that the CIA camp commandant had subsequently been promoted. The commandant was later identified as Matthew Zirbel. The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture revealed that no CIA employees were disciplined as a result of his death. After further investigation, there have been many more cases where the CIA has not taken responsibility nor faced repercussions for their actions. El-Masri's name was similar to that of Khalid al-Masri, a terror suspect; the Macedonian authorities thought he might be traveling on a forged passport, and notified the regional CIA station. A team of American CIA officials were dispatched to the Republic of Macedonia, where they kidnapped El-Masri after he was released by the Macedonian officers, but without regard to his legal rights under Macedonian law. It took over two months for the CIA official who ordered his arrest to assess whether El-Masri's passport was legitimate. El-Masri described being beaten and injected with drugs as part of his interrogation.

On 18 May 2006 U.S. Federal District Judge T.S. Ellis, III of the Eastern District of Virginia dismissed a lawsuit El-Masri filed against the CIA and three private companies allegedly involved with his transport, stating that a public trial would "present a grave risk of injury to national security." A Court of Appeals also dismissed the case.

On 9 October 2007 the U.S Supreme Court declined to hear El-Masri's appeal of the lower courts, without comment.

Bureau of Prisons inspection

On 21 November 2016, CBS News reported that an inspection of the Salt Pit, from officials from the United States Bureau of Prisons (BOP), had been confirmed through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits.

According to CBS News: "The admission came Thursday in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, which sued in April after the Bureau of Prisons denied having any record of involvement with the detention site."

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