The Rendition Project, led by Professor Ruth Blakeley, (School of Politics and IR, University of Kent) and Dr Sam Raphael (University of Westminster) has launched a new interactive tool that allows users to search the detailed profiles of more than 130 victims of the CIA’s rendition programme. The interactive tool can be found here. The development of the interactive tool was funded by a Social Sciences Faculty Research grant.
To coincide with the launch of the interactive tool, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Rendition Project have published a detailed report, based on 9 months of collaborative research, which unpicks the redactions in the 500-page Executive Summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into CIA torture. This has allowed The Rendition Project and Bureau of Investigative Journalism to piece together the hidden history of the CIA’s secret prison sites. Their work unveils many of the censored passages in the Senate report executive summary, drawing on public data sources such as flight records, aviation contracts, court cases, prisoner testimonies, declassified government documents and media and NGO reporting. Although many published accounts of individual journeys through the CIA black site network exist, this is the first comprehensive portrayal of the system’s inner dynamics from beginning to end. The full report can be read here.
Professor Ruth Blakeley currently teaches on Terrorism and Crimes of the State which is available as part of the School’s postgraduate module offering. Further information about studying with the School of Politics and International Relations is available here.