Tracking the ghost prisoners

Reprieve's new database records extraordinary renditions and secret prisons worldwide.

Reprieve has been busy building a prisons database to store and analyse research on renditions and secret prisons – including testimonies, flight logs and articles.

Thanks to the hard work of a team of volunteers and a programmer, Reprieve was able to open the Renditions Database to five partner organisations in early September 2009. The Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International, Cage Prisoners, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Rendition, and NYU School of Law are now active users of the database, which has become a valuable resource, enabling greater research collaboration than ever before.

The database enables quick access to key profiles (of prisoners, planes, prisons and personnel) as well as more complex queries (such as prisoners held in a certain location between certain dates, or suspected rendition crew aboard specific CIA flights).

The database now contains:

• 1629 profiles of ghost prisoners
• 307 profiles detailing captures of prisoners
•  4460 flight logs of CIA linked and military plane
• 1454 prison stays of prisoners in CIA, military and proxy prisons
• 327 transfers of prisoners between facilities
• 95 profiles of alleged terrorist group
•  49 profiles of CIA linked flight companies
• 65 profiles of suspected CIA crew members
• 2220 sources related to renditions and secret prisons

As we continue to stock it with further information the database will become an increasingly useful shared resource, helping us to push for accountability in relation to past crimes as well as understand and expose ongoing illegality.