Obama issues torture ban, orders CIA &#8216;secret prisons&#8217; closed

Obama issues torture ban, orders CIA ‘secret prisons’ closed

[JURIST] Discharging key campaign pledges on his third day in office, US President Barack Obama expressly banned US use of torture [JURIST news archive] in interrogations and directed the immediate shutdown of CIA detention facilities in a third executive order [text] on US detention practices issued Thursday. Declaring its overall intent to

the instrument expressly revoked Bush Executive Order 13440 limiting the applicability to the CIA of Common Article 3 [texts] of the Geneva Conventions and provided that
The order also prohibited any departure by any US government department or agency from the interrogation methods and standards set out in Army Field Manual 2 22.3 [text, PDF].

Specifically as regards the CIA, the order additionally instructed the agency to "close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates" and declared that it "shall not operate any such detention facility in the future", bringing to an official end the internationally-notorious system of CIA "secret prisons" that grew up after 9/11 and which played a prominent role in a worldwide pattern of US extraordinary renditions [JURIST news archives] of terror suspects.