Joint Study on global practices in relation to secret detention in the context of countering terrorism

The study highlights the occurrence of secret detentions, mainly in the fight against terrorism. In doing so it also underlines the close connection between secret detentions and enforced disappearances. The history of enforced disappearances and secret detentions is very closely connected as well as the concepts themselves. 

In underlining this a number of concepts are further elucidated, such as the overlap between incommunicado detention and enforced disappearance, the concept of victim, and the definition of enforced disappearance (and the weight of the so-called fourth element). 

The study also includes responses to a questionnaire by a number of countries and goes on to accuse many of those countries of having secret detentions, assisting and supporting the US rendition programme or facilitating the rendition programme. Finally, it also lists a number of specific cases of prisoners secretly detained.