Ghost detainee is a term used in the executive branch of the United States government to designate a person held in a detention center, whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous.
[1] According to then-CIA chief Michael Hayden in 2007, the CIA had detained up to 100 people at secret facilities abroad (known as black sites) since the 2002 capture of the suspected Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah.
He was taken to a CIA black site in Afghanistan, known as the Salt Pit, for questioning under 'enhanced interrogation techniques' (torture) before he was determined to be innocent in March and eventually released in May 2004 after some additional delays.
[7] According to the article, the CIA asked military intelligence officials to let them house ghost detainees at Abu Ghraib by September 2003 and proposed a memorandum of understanding between the agencies on the topic that November.
The practice, he wrote, 'was deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law'.When news of a detainee known only as Triple X became known to the public in late 2003, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was questioned about him.
On September 9, 2004, General Paul J. Kern testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, stating that an inquiry he led found that the Army had cooperated with the CIA in hiding dozens of ghost detainees from the Red Cross.