Salt Pit

The Salt Pit and Cobalt were the code names of an isolated clandestine CIA black site prison and interrogation center outside Bagram Air Base[1] in Afghanistan.

In 2011, the Miami Herald indicated that the Salt Pit was the same facility that Guantanamo Bay detainees referred to as the dark prison[4][5]—a fact subsequently confirmed in the CIA torture report.

[6] Beginning in April 2021, until the final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, large sections of the Salt Pit were demolished by the departing personnel before the Taliban gained control of the site.

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 prisoners were kept in total darkness and isolation, with only a bucket for human waste and without sufficient heat in winter months.

Both the Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and CIA General Counsel Scott Muller have claimed they were "not very familiar" with the detention site.

[10] 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.

[15] 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.

[25] 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.

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.

[29] 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.

[30] The Bureau of Prison inspection first became public knowledge when the United States Senate Intelligence Committee published its 600-page unclassified summary of its (then-classified) 6,700 page report on the CIA's use of torture.

[31] 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.

[30][32] One of the documents the BOP published in response to the FOIA request was an email, in which an official (whose name was redacted) forwarded a link to the CBS article together with the comment, "They just won't let it go.