title: The Hex Girls

text: In "What's New, Scooby-Doo?", the Hex Girls appear in the episode "The Vampire Strikes Back". While the girls are in the Fortescu Castle in Transylvania, trying to shoot a videoclip on their latest success, they are attacked by an apparent vampire. Connecting the attack with their previous experiences, Dusk tries to convince the others to leave the area for their own safety, while a disagreeing Thorn and Luna want to stay and try to shoot the videoclip. This creates an atmosphere of instability among the group, with Dusk considering leaving for a solo career. When Mystery Incorporated arrive at the same castle, the Hex Girls request their help to solve the mystery, while trying to prevent the girls from breaking up. In the end, Thorn, Dusk and Luna are able to wrap up the shooting, while enjoying the company of Scooby and the gang.


title: The Hex Girls

text: In "Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated", the Hex Girls appear in the episodes "In Fear of the Phantom" and "Dance of the Undead". In this continuity, the Hex Girls are already world-famous when they meet the gang, with Velma being one of their biggest fans.


title: The Hex Girls

text: In "In Fear of the Phantom", while singing "Hex Girl" during a concert in Crystal Cove, the group are attacked by an apparent ghost, and Thorn is almost crushed to death. After offering their assistance to the band, Daphne is captured while acting as a stand-in for Thorn singing "Earth, Wind, Fire, and Air". However, she is soon rediscovered, angry after overhearing that Fred wished he "didn't care about her". Afterward, she temporarily joins the band under the name "Crush". To help Daphne get over Fred, Thorn co-writes "Trap of Love" with her, after the performance of which the Phantom attempts to abduct Crush but instead takes a dummy of her, triggering Fred's trap. The Phantom turns out to be the Hex Girls' songwriter, Daniel Prezette, formally known as "Fantzee Pantz", who harbored jealousy of the Hex Girls' success and anger over having been replaced by them and delegated from his former star status - vowing revenge. With Prezette in jail and no more need for Daphne as a member, despite an open invitation from Thorn to remain, she unceremoniously retires from the band.


title: The Hex Girls

text: In "Dance of the Undead", after most of Crystal Cove, including Fred, Velma, and Daphne, is hypnotized by a zombie ska band called Rude Boy and the Ska-Tastics, Scooby and Shaggy track them down and ask them for help to defeat them in a battle of the bands, styled after the one from "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World". They also help the gang find another clue of the Crystal Cove Mystery, by discovering and deciphering a hidden soundtrack in the Planispheric Disk.


title: The Hex Girls

text: In "Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?", the Hex Girls appear in the episode "I Put a Hex on You!", where-in after Daphne's makeup vlog gains internet fame, she is invited to become the band's prime consultant, which also leads the gang to another mystery in the form of the haunted guitar of Esther Moonkiler that can seemingly control people's minds. Like in "Mystery Incorporated", the Hex Girls are depicted as already being world-famous when they meet the gang; unlike previous incarnations, the band is depicted as having had a former fourth member, "Xander", who had been forced to leave the band due to an outbreak of hives, later running the band's fan club. The group is depicted as having embraced all that fame has had to offer them, with Thorn having a tranquillizer gun set aside for her specifically, while a rival group known as "The Jinx Gals" are also referenced, of whom the Hex Girls deride as a rip-off of their own act.


title: The Hex Girls

text: Upon the release of "Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost", Warner Bros. expressed interest in the development of a spin-off television series revolving around the characters, to be developed by the film's writers Rick Copp and David A. Goodman. Although it went unrealized, elements of this series were adopted into subsequent films featuring the characters, and in February 2019, Copp confirmed he had spoken further to Cartoon Network with regards developing the television series, with Hale, Wiedlin and Brooks all expressing interest in reprising their roles, with Brooks citing MeToo as "even more of a bolster for the argument that we should be trying to revive these characters".


title: The Hex Girls

text: In the final issue of "Scooby-Doo! Team-Up", serving as the final installment of the "Crisis of Infinite Scoobys" arc (a title in reference to "Crisis on Infinite Earths"), being a crossover between the various incarnations of Mystery Incorporated from "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo", "A Pup Named Scooby-Doo", "What's New, Scooby-Doo?", the "Scooby-Doo" film series, "Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!", "Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated", "Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!" and "Scooby Apocalypse", the Hex Girls are revealed alongside Flim-Flam, Robi and Red Herring to have been controlling a gigantic Scrappy-Doo on the behest of Vincent Van Ghoul against the various incarnations of Mystery Incorporated, being upset that the Scooby Gang were allowed to have their characters evolve over time and continuities and gain more adventure and fame, and having been cast aside to be forgotten. After being questioned as to the absence of the real Scrappy-Doo from the plan, Thorn notes "that mutt [is] too annoying, even for us!", before a pack of various versions of Scrappy-Doo turn up to fight all incarnations.


title: The Hex Girls

text: The Hex Girls co-creator Rick Copp has cited "Josie and the Pussycats" as a partial inspiration in creating the characters.


title: The Hex Girls

text: The Hex Girls were immediately embraced by fans of Scooby-Doo, and have gone on to be considered cult-classic characters. Many people, such as author Heather Greene, felt "they reflect the "girl power" movement and could be witch-derivatives of the Spice Girls..." The band was such a tent pole for a generation that in 2019, a 4-piece rough and tumble rock band from Cedar Falls, Iowa adopted the Hex Girls name to their own band in reference to the "Scooby-Doo" franchise.


title: The Hex Girls

text: After the release of Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost, The Hex Girls appeared in various types of merchandise created to cross market the film, including books like "Scooby-Doo! and the Hex Files."


title: The Hex Girls

text: In 2021, Hex Girls merchandise began being made by the popular retail chain Hot Topic. In May, they revealed an exclusive three-pack of Funko Pop's, featuring Thorn, Dusk, and Luna. The Pops sold out in under 10 minutes, and are now rare collector's items. In October, Hot Topic revealed the new Hex Girls clothing line.


title: Noah Hawley

text: Noah Hawley (born ) is an American director, producer, and writer for television and film who created and wrote the FX television series "Fargo" (2014–present) and "Legion" (2017–2019). Hawley earlier worked on the television series "Bones" (2005–2008), "The Unusuals" (2009), and "My Generation" (2010), and wrote the film "The Alibi" (2006). He also wrote and directed the film "Lucy in the Sky" (2019). He is set to create a new television series based on the "Alien" film franchise. In addition to his work in film and television, he has also written six novels.


title: Noah Hawley

text: Hawley was born and raised in New York City. His mother, Louise Armstrong, was a non-fiction writer and activist, and his maternal grandmother was a playwright. His father, Tom Hawley, was a businessman. He has a twin brother, Alexi, who is a writer for the television show "The Following" and the creator of "State of Affairs".


title: Noah Hawley

text: Hawley graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a degree in political science in 1989. He worked for the Legal Aid Society in New York City, dealing with cases involving child abuse and neglect. He later moved to San Francisco. He worked in computer programming at law firms and as a paralegal.


title: Noah Hawley

text: He has published six novels: "A Conspiracy of Tall Men" (1998), "Other People's Weddings" (2004), "The Punch" (2008), "The Good Father" (2012), "Before the Fall" (2016), and "Anthem" (2022).


title: Noah Hawley

text: Hawley was a writer and producer on the first three seasons of the television series "Bones" (2005–2008). He was also creator and executive producer of "The Unusuals" (2009) and "My Generation" (2010).


title: Noah Hawley

text: Hawley is the creator, primary writer, and executive producer of the FX anthology television series "Fargo" (2014), based on the Coen brothers' 1996 film of the same name. On August 25, 2014, "Fargo" won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries, along with 17 additional nominations at the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards. In total, the series has been nominated for 113 awards since its premiere, winning 32 of them. The fourth season of "Fargo" premiered on September 27, 2020.


title: Noah Hawley

text: In December 2015, Hawley extended his production deal with FX. He wrote and served as executive producer for "Legion", an FX television series based on the Marvel comic book character.


title: Noah Hawley

text: On December 10, 2020, it was announced that Hawley will be creating a television series based on the "Alien" franchise for FX, for which he will serve as the showrunner, primary writer, and executive producer. The show is scheduled to be released sometime in 2023.


title: Noah Hawley

text: In September 2014, Hawley signed a deal with Universal Pictures to script an untitled project for their upcoming Dark Universe. Sony Pictures has acquired the rights to Hawley's latest novel, "Before the Fall", with him writing the screenplay. In 2016, his 26 Keys production company signed a deal with 20th Century Fox to do films.


title: Noah Hawley

text: On July 20, 2017, Hawley announced at Comic Con that he was writing and directing a "Doctor Doom" movie with 20th Century Fox. However, the project was shelved following Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox.


title: Noah Hawley

text: In 2019, he made his feature film directorial debut with "Lucy in the Sky", a drama film starring Natalie Portman as an astronaut, for Fox Searchlight.


title: Noah Hawley

text: In November 2019, it was announced that Hawley would be writing and directing the fourth installment in the rebooted "Star Trek" franchise. He finished the script in September 2020. It would feature a new crew, although set in the same universe. In late November 2020, the project was cancelled and Hawley had left.


title: Noah Hawley

text: Hawley resides in Austin, Texas and Los Angeles, California, with his wife, Kyle Hawley, and their two children.


title: Megastructure

text: A megastructure is a very large artificial object, although the limits of precisely how large vary considerably. Some apply the term to any especially large or tall building. Some sources define a megastructure as an enormous self-supporting artificial construct. The products of megascale engineering or astroengineering are megastructures. The lower bound of megastructural engineering might be considered any structure that has any single dimension 1 megameter (1000 km) in length.


title: Megastructure

text: Most megastructure designs could not be constructed with today's level of industrial technology. This makes their design examples of speculative (or exploratory) engineering. Those that could be constructed easily qualify as megaprojects.


title: Megastructure

text: Megastructures are also an architectural concept popularized in the 1960s where a city could be encased in a single building, or a relatively small number of buildings interconnected. Such arcology concepts are popular in science fiction. Megastructures often play a part in the plot or setting of science fiction movies and books, such as "Rendezvous with Rama" by Arthur C. Clarke.


title: Megastructure

text: In 1968, Ralph Wilcoxen defined a megastructure as any structural framework into which rooms, houses, or other small buildings can later be installed, uninstalled, and replaced; and which is capable of "unlimited" extension. This type of framework allows the structure to adapt to the individual wishes of its residents, even as those wishes change with time.


title: Megastructure

text: Other sources define a megastructure as "any development in which residential densities are able to support services and facilities essential for the development to become a self-contained community".


title: Megastructure

text: Many architects have designed such megastructures. Some of the more notable such architects and architectural groups include the Metabolist Movement, Archigram, Cedric Price, Frei Otto, Constant Nieuwenhuys, Yona Friedman, and Buckminster Fuller.


title: Megastructure

text: Networks of roads or railways, and collections of buildings (cities and associated suburbs), are usually not considered megastructures, despite frequently qualifying based on size. However, an ecumenopolis might qualify.


title: Megastructure

text: Most stellar scale megastructure proposals are designs to make use of the energy from a sun-like star while possibly still providing gravity or other attributes that would make it attractive for an advanced civilization.


title: Megastructure

text: Related structures which might not be classified as individual stellar megastructures, but occur on a similar scale:


title: CIA black sites

text: CIA black sites refer to the black sites that are controlled by the CIA and used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain enemy combatants.


title: CIA black sites

text: US President George W. Bush acknowledged the existence of secret prisons operated by the CIA during a speech on September 6, 2006. A claim that the black sites existed was made by "The Washington Post" in November 2005 and before this by human rights NGOs.


title: CIA black sites

text: A European Union (EU) report adopted on February 14, 2007, by a majority of the European Parliament (382 MEPs voting in favor, 256 against and 74 abstaining) stated the CIA operated 1,245 flights and that it was not possible to contradict evidence or suggestions that secret detention centers where prisoners have been tortured were operated in Poland and Romania. After denying the fact for years, Poland confirmed in 2014 that it has hosted black sites.


title: CIA black sites

text: Black sites operated by the US government and its surrogates were first officially acknowledged by President George W. Bush in the fall of 2006. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported details of black site practices to the US government in early 2007, and the contents of that report became public in March 2009.


title: CIA black sites

text: On September 6, 2006, Bush publicly admitted the existence of secret prisons and announced that many of the detainees held there were being transferred to Guantanamo Bay.


title: CIA black sites

text: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) prepared a report based on interviews with black site detainees, conducted October 6–11 and December 4–14, 2006, after their transfer to Guantanamo Bay. The report was submitted to Bush administration officials.


title: CIA black sites

text: On March 15, 2009, Mark Danner provided a report in the "New York Review of Books" (with an abridged version in "The New York Times") describing and commenting on the contents of the ICRC report. According to Danner, the report was marked "confidential" and was not previously made public before being made available to him. Danner provided excerpts of interviews with detainees, including Abu Zubaydah, Walid bin Attash and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Danner also provided excerpts of the ICRC report characterizing procedures used at the black sites, dubbed "an alternative set of procedures" by President Bush, and discussed whether they fit the definition of torture.


title: CIA black sites

text: Black sites are embroiled in controversy over the legal status of the detainees held there, the legal authority for the operation of the sites (including the collaboration between governments involved), and full (or even minimal) disclosure by the governments involved.


title: CIA black sites

text: An important aspect of black site operation is that the legal status of black site detainees is not clearly defined. In practice, inmates in black sites have no rights other than those given by the captors.


title: CIA black sites

text: The revelation of such black sites adds to the controversy surrounding US government policy regarding those whom it describes as "unlawful enemy combatants". Approximately 30 detainees are considered the most dangerous or important terrorism suspects and are held by the CIA at black sites under the most secretive arrangements. More than 70 other detainees who may have originally been sent to black sites, but were soon delivered by the CIA to intelligence agencies in allied Middle Eastern and Asian countries such as Afghanistan, Morocco, and Egypt. A further 100 ghost detainees kidnapped in Europe and "rendered" to other countries must be counted, according to Swiss senator Dick Marty's report of January 2006. This process is called "extraordinary rendition". Marty also underlined that European countries probably had knowledge of these covert operations. Furthermore, the CIA apparently financially assists and directs the jails in these countries. While the US and host countries have signed the United Nations Convention Against Torture, CIA officers are allowed to use what the agency calls "enhanced interrogation techniques". These have been alleged to constitute "severe pain or suffering" under the UN convention, which would be a violation of the treaty and thus US law.


title: CIA black sites

text: There is little or no stated legal authority for the operation of black sites by the United States or the other countries believed to be involved. In fact, the specifics of the network of black sites remains controversial. The United Nations has begun to intervene in this aspect of black sites.


title: CIA black sites

text: The fourteen European countries Marty listed as collaborators in "unlawful inter-state transfers" are Great Britain, Germany, the Isle of Man, Italy, Sweden, Bosnia, North Macedonia, Turkey, Spain, Cyprus, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Romania and Poland. Named airport bases include Glasgow Prestwick Airport (Scotland), Shannon & Baldonnel (Ireland), Ramstein and Frankfurt (Germany), Aviano Air Base (Italy), Palma de Mallorca Airport (Spain), Tuzla Air Base (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Skopje (North Macedonia), Athens (Greece), Larnaca (Cyprus), Prague (Czech Republic), Stockholm (Sweden), as well as Rabat (Morocco) and Algiers (Algeria). Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz characterized the accusation as "libel", while Romania similarly said there was no evidence.


title: CIA black sites

text: British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the report "added absolutely nothing new whatever to the information we have". Poland and Romania received the most direct accusals, as the report claims the evidence for these sites is "strong". The report cites airports in Timișoara, Romania, and Szymany, Poland, as "detainee transfer/drop-off point[s]". Eight airports outside Europe are also cited.


title: CIA black sites

text: On May 19, 2006, the United Nations Committee Against Torture (the U.N. body that monitors compliance with the UN Convention Against Torture) recommended that the United States cease holding detainees in secret prisons and stop the practice of rendering prisoners to countries where they are likely to be tortured. The decision was made in Geneva following two days of hearings at which a 26-member U.S. delegation defended the practices.


title: CIA black sites

text: The U.S. government does not provide information about the operation of black sites, and for a period of time did not provide information about the existence of black sites.


title: CIA black sites

text: Responding to the allegations about black sites, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated on December 5, 2005 that the U.S. had not violated any country's sovereignty in the rendition of suspects, and that individuals were never rendered to countries where it was believed that they might be tortured. Some media sources have noted her comments do not exclude the possibility of covert prison sites operated with the knowledge of the "host" nation, or the possibility that promises by such "host" nations that they will refrain from torture may not be genuine. On September 6, 2006, Bush publicly admitted the existence of the secret prisons and that many of the detainees held there were being transferred to Guantanamo Bay.


title: CIA black sites

text: In December 2002, "The Washington Post" reported that "the capture of al Qaeda leaders Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Pakistan, Omar al-Faruq in Indonesia, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in Kuwait and Muhammad al Darbi in Yemen were all partly the result of information gained during interrogations." The "Post" cited "U.S. intelligence and national security officials" in reporting this.


title: CIA black sites

text: On April 21, 2006, Mary O. McCarthy, a longtime CIA analyst, was fired for allegedly leaking classified information to a "Washington Post" reporter, Dana Priest, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her revelations concerning the CIA's black sites. Some have speculated that the information allegedly leaked may have included information about the camps. McCarthy's lawyer, however, claimed that McCarthy "did not have access to the information she is accused of leaking". "The Washington Post" posited that McCarthy "had been probing allegations of criminal mistreatment by the CIA and its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan", and became convinced that "CIA people had lied" in a meeting with US Senate staff in June 2005.


title: CIA black sites

text: In a September 29, 2006, speech, Bush stated: "Once captured, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were taken into custody of the Central Intelligence Agency. The questioning of these and other suspected terrorists provided information that helped us protect the American people. They helped us break up a cell of Southeast Asian terrorist operatives that had been groomed for attacks inside the United States. They helped us disrupt an al Qaeda operation to develop anthrax for terrorist attacks. They helped us stop a planned strike on a U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, and to prevent a planned attack on the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, and to foil a plot to hijack passenger planes and to fly them into Heathrow Airport and London's Canary Wharf."


title: CIA black sites

text: On July 20, 2007, Bush made an executive order banning torture of captives by intelligence officials.


title: CIA black sites

text: In a September 7, 2007, public address to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, rare for a sitting Director of Central Intelligence, General Michael Hayden praised the program of detaining and interrogating prisoners, and credited it with providing 70 percent of the National Intelligence Estimate on the threat to America released in July. Hayden said the CIA has detained fewer than 100 people at secret facilities abroad since 2002, and even fewer prisoners have been secretly transferred to or from foreign governments. In a 20-minute question-and-answer session with the audience, Hayden disputed assertions that the CIA has used waterboarding, stress positions, hypothermia and dogs to interrogate suspects—all techniques that have been broadly criticized. "That's a pretty good example of taking something to the darkest corner of the room and not reflective of what my agency does" Hayden told one person from a human rights organization.


title: CIA black sites

text: The vast majority of information that has been provided to the public about black sites has been the result of investigative reporting. For full details, see the section below on the media and investigative history.


title: CIA black sites

text: As discussed in the preceding section, many of the facts surrounding black sites remain controversial. The identity of detainees and the location of sites are known with varying degrees of certainty, though many facts have been discovered in substantial detail.


title: CIA black sites

text: The list of those thought to be held by the CIA includes suspected al-Qaeda members Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Abu Zubaydah. The total number of ghost detainees is presumed to be at least one hundred, although the precise number cannot be determined because fewer than 10% have been charged or convicted. However, Swiss senator Dick Marty's memorandum on "alleged detention in Council of Europe states" stated that about 100 persons have been kidnapped by the CIA on European territory and subsequently rendered to countries where they may have been tortured. This number of 100 persons does not overlap, but adds itself to the U.S.-detained 100 ghost detainees.


title: CIA black sites

text: A number of the alleged detainees listed above were transferred to the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba in the fall of 2006. With this publicly announced act, the United States government "de facto" acknowledged the existence of secret prisons abroad in which these prisoners had been held.


title: CIA black sites

text: Khalid El-Masri is a German citizen who was detained in Skopje, flown to Afghanistan, interrogated and tortured by the CIA for several months, and then released in remote Albania in May 2004 without having been charged with any offense. This was apparently due to a misunderstanding that arose concerning the similarity of the spelling of El-Masri's name with the spelling of suspected terrorist Khalid al-Masri. Germany had issued warrants for 13 people suspected to be involved with the abduction but dropped them in September 2007.


title: CIA black sites

text: On October 9, 2007, the United States Supreme Court declined without comment to hear an appeal of El-Masri's civil lawsuit against the United States ("El-Masri v. Tenet"), letting stand an earlier verdict by a federal district court judge, which was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Those courts had agreed with the government that the case could not go forward without exposing state secrets. In May 2007, Masri was committed to a psychiatric institution after he was arrested in the southern German city of Neu-Ulm on suspicion of arson. His attorney blamed his troubles on the CIA, saying the kidnapping and detention had left Masri a "psychological wreck".


title: CIA black sites

text: The CIA abducted Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (also known as Abu Omar) in Milan and transferred him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured and abused. Hassan Nasr was released by an Egyptian court—who considered his detention "unfounded"—in February 2007 and has not been indicted for any crime in Italy. Ultimately, 26 Americans (mostly suspected CIA agents) and nine Italians were indicted. On November 4, 2009, an Italian judge convicted ("in absentia") 23 of the Americans, including a U.S. Air Force (USAF) colonel. Two of the Italians were also convicted in person.


title: CIA black sites

text: The defense for Aafia Siddiqui, who was tried in New York City, alleged that she was held and tortured in a secret US facility at Bagram for several years. She was allegedly detained for five years at Bagram with her children; she was the only female prisoner. She was known to the male detainees as "Prisoner 650." Aafia's case gained notoriety due to Yvonne Ridley's allegations in her book, "The Grey Lady of Bagram", a ghostly female detainee, who kept prisoners awake "with her haunting sobs and piercing screams". In 2005 male prisoners were so agitated by her plight, Ridley said, that they went on hunger strike for six days. Siddiqui's family maintains that she was abused at Bagram.


title: CIA black sites

text: The trial began in January 2010 and lasted 14 days, with the jury deliberating for three days before reaching a verdict. On February 3, 2010, she was found guilty of two counts of attempted murder, armed assault, using and carrying a firearm, and three counts of assault on U.S. officers and employees. Siddiqui was sentenced to 86 years in prison on September 23, 2010, following a hearing in which she testified.


title: CIA black sites

text: An estimated 50 prisons have been used to hold detainees in 28 countries, in addition to at least 25 more prisons in Afghanistan and 20 in Iraq. It is estimated that the U.S. has also used 17 ships as floating prisons since 2001, bringing the total estimated number of prisons operated by the U.S. and/or its allies to house alleged terrorist suspects since 2001 to more than 100.


title: CIA black sites

text: Countries that held suspects on behalf of the U.S. include Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Kosovo, Libya, Lithuania, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Somalia, South Africa, Thailand, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zambia.


title: CIA black sites

text: In Thailand, the Voice of America relay station in Ban Dung District of Udon Thani Province was reported to be a CIA black site known as "Cat's Eye" or "Detention Site Green". Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has denied these reports.


title: CIA black sites

text: In May 2018, the BBC reported that the Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base was the location of the black site used to interrogate Abu Zubaydah, a 31-year-old Saudi-born Palestinian, believed to be one of Osama Bin Laden's top lieutenants. In December 2014 the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) published an executive summary of a secret 6,000-page report on CIA techniques. The report alleges that at least eight Thai senior officials knew of the secret site. The site was closed in December 2002. Thailand has denied the existence of the site while the US government has neither confirmed or denied its existence.


title: CIA black sites

text: In August 2018, the Royal Thai Army announced that another suspected Udon Thani black site, the former Ramasun Station, would be turned into a tourist attraction. The army rejected suspicions that the station had been used as a black site.


title: CIA black sites

text: In Afghanistan, the prison at Bagram Air Base was initially housed in an abandoned brickmaking factory outside Kabul known as the "Salt Pit", but later moved to the base some time after a young Afghan died of hypothermia after being stripped naked and left chained to a floor. During this period, there were several incidents of torture and prisoner abuse, though they were related to non-secret prisoners, and not the CIA-operated portion of the prison. At some point prior to 2005, the prison was again relocated, this time to an unknown site. Metal containers at Bagram Air Base were reported to be black sites. Some Guantanamo Bay detainees report being tortured in a prison they called "the dark prison", also near Kabul. Also in Afghanistan, Jalalabad and Asadabad have been reported as suspected sites.


title: CIA black sites

text: In Iraq, Abu Ghraib was disclosed as a black site, and in 2004 was the center of an extensive prisoner abuse scandal. Additionally, Camp Bucca (near Umm Qasr) and Camp Cropper (near the Baghdad International Airport) were reported.


title: CIA black sites

text: The UAE runs secret prisons in Yemen where prisoners are forcibly disappeared and tortured. A Geneva-based human rights group, SAM for Rights and Liberties called on the Emirati forces to close all its secret prisons being operated in Yemen. The group claimed that these secret detention facilities intentionally held prisoners, including political opponents, civilians, opinion-makers. In its 26 December 2020 video statement SAM cited one of its reports citing that the Saudi and UAE forces subjected the Yemeni detainees to “cruel forms of torture.”


title: CIA black sites

text: Mwatana for Human Rights reported on 11 April 2021 about the continued forceful detention of approximately 27 civilians at the Al Munawara Central Prison, Mukalla City, Yemen by UAE authorities. Of the 27 detainees, 13 had been granted acquittal, 11 completed their full terms, and the cases of the remaining 3 were nullified by the court. The detainees have been imprisoned for more than a year despite the Hadhramout Specialized Criminal Court granting their release. As per the former detainees, survivors, and witnesses, Emirati forces operating in Yemen run illegal detention centers in the south of the country. Mwatana has also verified the torture of detainees at these Emirati-run secret detention centers where some have gone as far as committing suicide to protest against their unfair detention, as cited by one of the victim's brothers.


title: CIA black sites

text: Some reported sites in Egypt, Libya and Morocco, as well as Djibouti. The Temara interrogation centre, outside the Moroccan capital, Rabat, is cited as one such site.


title: CIA black sites

text: On January 23, 2009, "The Guardian" reported that the CIA ran a secret detention center in Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, a former French Foreign Legion base.


title: CIA black sites

text: The U.S. Naval Base in Diego Garcia was reported to be a black site, but UK and U.S. officials initially attempted to suppress these reports. However, it has since been revealed by "Time" magazine and a "senior American official" source that the isle was indeed used by the U.S. as a secret prison for "war on terror" detainees. In 2015, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, elaborated saying Diego Garcia was used by the CIA for "nefarious activities". He said that he had heard from three U.S. intelligence sources that Diego Garcia was used as "a transit site where people were temporarily housed, let us say, and interrogated from time to time" and that "What I heard was more along the lines of using it as a transit location when perhaps other places were full or other places were deemed too dangerous or insecure, or unavailable at the moment".


title: CIA black sites

text: While the revelation was expected to cause considerable embarrassment for both governments, UK officials were expected to face considerable exposure since they had previously quelled public outcry over U.S. detainee abuse by falsely reassuring the public no U.S. detainment camps were housed on any UK bases or territories. The UK may also face liabilities over apparent violations of international treaties. On 21 February 2008, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband admitted that two United States extraordinary rendition flights refuelled on Diego Garcia in 2002, and was "very sorry" that earlier denials were having to be corrected.


title: CIA black sites

text: Several European countries (particularly the former Soviet satellites and republics) have been accused of and have denied hosting black sites: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Armenia, Georgia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Slovak ministry spokesman Richard Fides said the country had no black sites, but its intelligence service spokesman Vladimir Simko said he would not disclose any information about possible Slovak black sites to the media. EU Justice commissioner Franco Frattini has repeatedly asserted suspension of voting rights for any member state found to have hosted a CIA black site.


title: CIA black sites

text: The interior minister of Romania, Vasile Blaga, has assured the EU that the Mihail Kogălniceanu Airport was used only as a supply point for equipment, and never for detention, though there have been reports to the contrary. A fax intercepted by the Onyx Swiss interception system, from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry to its London embassy, stated that 23 prisoners were clandestinely interrogated by the U.S. at the base. In 2007, it was disclosed by Dick Marty (investigator) that the CIA allegedly had secret prisons in Poland and Romania. On April 22, 2015, Ion Iliescu, former President of Romania, confirmed that he had granted a CIA request for a site in Romania, but was not aware of the nature of the site, describing it as a small gesture of goodwill to an ally in advance of Romania's eventual accession to NATO. Iliescu further stated that had he known of the intended use of the site, he would certainly not have approved the request.


title: CIA black sites

text: In June 2008, a "New York Times" article claimed, citing unnamed CIA officers, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was held in a secret facility in Poland near Szymany Airport, about north of Warsaw and it was there where he was interrogated and the waterboarding was applied. It is claimed that waterboarding was used about 100 times over a period of two weeks before Khalid Sheikh Mohammed began to cooperate. In September 2008, two anonymous Polish intelligence officers made the claims about facilities being located in Poland in the Polish daily newspaper "Dziennik". One of them stated that between 2002 and 2005 the CIA held terror suspects inside a military intelligence training base in Stare Kiejkuty in north-eastern Poland. The officer said only the CIA had access to the isolated zone, which was used because it was a secure site far from major towns and was close to a former military airport. Both Prime Minister Leszek Miller and President Aleksander Kwasniewski knew about the base, the newspaper reported. However, the officer said it was unlikely either man knew if the prisoners were being tortured because the Poles had no control over the Americans' activities. On January 23, 2009, "The Guardian" reported that the CIA had run black sites at Szymany Airport in Poland, Camp Eagle in Bosnia and Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. The United States has refused to cooperate with a Polish investigation into the matter, according to the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights.


title: CIA black sites

text: In November 2009, reports alleged a black site referred to in "The Washington Post"s 2005 article had been located in Lithuania. A former riding school in Antaviliai, a village some from Vilnius, was said to have been converted into a jail by the CIA in 2004. The allegations resulted in a parliamentary inquiry, and Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė stated that she had "indirect suspicions" about a black site in her country. On December 22, 2009, the parliamentary commission finished its investigation and stated they found no proof that a black site had existed in Lithuania. Valdas Adamkus, a former president of Lithuania, said he is certain that no alleged terrorists were ever detained on Lithuanian territory. However, in a file submitted in September 2015 to the European Court of Human Rights, a lawyer for a Saudi-born Guantanamo detainee said the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture released in December 2014 leaves "no plausible room for doubt" that Lithuania was somehow involved in the Central Intelligence Agency programme. In January 2022, it was reported in a Washington Post article that a former black site has been put up for sale by the Lithuanian government. The former riding stable outside of the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius consists of long corridors leading to windowless and soundproof rooms where “one could do whatever one wanted,” said current Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas, who led a parliamentary investigation into the facility in 2010.


title: CIA black sites

text: After the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, the president of Poland between 1995 and 2005, Alexander Kwasniewski, admitted that he had agreed to host a secret CIA black site in Poland, but that activities were to be carried out in accordance to Polish law. He said that a U.S. draft memorandum had stated that "people held in Poland are to be treated as prisoners of war and will be afforded all the rights they are entitled to", but due to time constraints the U.S. had not signed the memorandum.


title: CIA black sites

text: "The Washington Post" on December 26, 2002, reported about a secret CIA prison in one corner of Bagram Air Force Base (Afghanistan) consisting of metal shipping containers. On March 14, 2004, "The Guardian" reported that three British citizens were held captive in a secret section (Camp Echo) of the Guantánamo Bay complex. Several other articles reported the retention of ghost detainees by the CIA, alongside the other official "enemy combatants". However, it was the revelations of "The Washington Post", in a November 2, 2005, article, that would start the scandal. (below)


title: CIA black sites

text: A report by the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, entitled "Enduring Freedom - Abuses by US Forces in Afghanistan", states that the CIA has operated in Afghanistan since September 2001; maintaining a large facility in the Ariana Chowk neighborhood of Kabul and a detention and interrogation facility at the Bagram airbase.


title: CIA black sites

text: In the February 26 – March 4, 2005, edition of Ireland's "Village" magazine, an article titled "Abductions via Shannon" claimed that Dublin and Shannon airports in Ireland were "used by the CIA to abduct suspects in its 'war on terror'". The article went on to state that a Boeing 737 (registration number N313P, later reregistered N4476S) "was routed through Shannon and Dublin on fourteen occasions from January 1, 2003 to the end of 2004. This is according to the flight log of the aircraft obtained from Washington, D.C., by "Village". Destinations included Estonia (1/11/03); Larnaca, Salé, Kabul, Palma, Skopje, Baghdad, (all January 16, 2004); Marka (May 10, 2004 and June 13, 2004). Other flights began in places such as Dubai (June 2, 2003 and December 30, 2003), Mitiga (October 29, 2003 and April 27, 2004), Baghdad (2003) and Marka (February 8, 2004, March 4, 2004, May 10, 2004), all of which ended in Washington, D.C..


title: CIA black sites

text: According to the article, the same aircraft landed in Guantanamo Bay on September 23, 2003, "having travelled from Kabul to Szymany (Poland), Mihail Kogălniceanu (Romania) and Salé (Morocco)". It had been used "in connection with the abduction in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia, of Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, on 31 December 2003, and his transport to a US detention centre in Afghanistan on 23 January 2004".


title: CIA black sites

text: In the article, it was noted that the aircraft's registration showed it as being owned by Premier Executive Transport Services, based in Massachusetts, though as of February 2005 it was listed as being owned by Keeler and Tate Management, Reno, Nevada (US). On the day of registration transference, a Gulfstream V jet (number N8068V) used in the same activities, was transferred from Premier Executive Transport Services to a company called Baynard Foreign Marketing.


title: CIA black sites

text: A story by reporter Dana Priest published in "The Washington Post" of November 2, 2005, reported: "The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important alleged al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement." According to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats, there is a network of foreign prisons that includes or has included sites in several European democracies, Thailand, Afghanistan, and a small portion of the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba—this network has been labeled by Amnesty International as "The Gulag Archipelago", in a clear reference to the novel of the same name by Russian writer and activist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.


title: CIA black sites

text: The reporting of the secret prisons was heavily criticized by members and former members of the Bush Administration. However, Priest states no one in the administration requested that "The Washington Post" not print the story. Rather they asked they not publish the names of the countries in which the prisons are located. "The Post has not identified the East European countries involved in the secret program at the request of senior U.S. officials who argued that the disclosure could disrupt counter-terrorism efforts".


title: CIA black sites

text: On November 3, 2005, Tom Malinowski of the New York-based Human Rights Watch cited circumstantial evidence pointing to Poland and Romania hosting CIA-operated covert prisons. Flight records obtained by the group documented the Boeing 737 'N4476S' leased by the CIA for transporting prisoners leaving Kabul and making stops in Poland and Romania before continuing on to Morocco, and finally Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Such flight patterns might corroborate the claims of government officials that prisoners are grouped into different classes being deposited in different locations. Malinowski's comments prompted quick denials by both Polish and Romanian government officials as well as sparking the concern of the International Committee of the Red Cross ("ICRC"), who called for access to all foreign terrorism suspects held by the United States.


title: CIA black sites

text: The accusation that several EU members may have allowed the United States to hold, imprison or torture detainees on their soil has been a subject of controversy in the European body, who announced in November 2005 that any country found to be complicit could lose their right to vote in the council.


title: CIA black sites

text: On November 8, 2005, rights group Amnesty International provided the first comprehensive testimony from former inmates of the CIA black sites. The report, which documented the cases of three Yemeni nationals, was the first to describe the conditions in black site detention in detail. In a subsequent report, in April 2006, Amnesty International used flight records and other information to locate the black site in Eastern Europe or Central Asia.


title: CIA black sites

text: On December 28, 2006, the BBC reported that during 2003, a well-known CIA Gulfstream V aircraft implicated in extraordinary renditions, N379P, had on several occasions landed at the Polish airbase of Szymany. The airport manager said that airport officials were told to keep away from the aircraft, which parked at the far end of the runway and frequently kept their engines running. Vans from a nearby intelligence base (Stare Kiejkuty) met the aircraft, stayed for a short while and then drove off. Landing fees were paid in cash, with the invoices made out to "probably fake" American companies.


title: CIA black sites

text: An August 13, 2007, story by Jane Mayer in "The New Yorker" reported that the CIA has operated "black site" secret prisons by the direct presidential order of George W. Bush since shortly after 9/11, and that extreme psychological interrogation measures based at least partially on the Vietnam-era Phoenix Program were used on detainees. These included sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, keeping prisoners naked indefinitely and photographing them naked to degrade and humiliate them, and forcibly administering drugs by suppositories to further break down their dignity. According to Mayer's report, CIA officers have taken out professional liability insurance, fearing that they could be criminally prosecuted if what they have already done became public knowledge.


title: CIA black sites

text: On September 14, 2007, "The Washington Post" reported that members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had requested the withdrawal of the nomination of John A. Rizzo—a career CIA lawyer—for the position of general counsel, due to concerns about his support for Bush administration legal doctrines permitting "enhanced interrogation" of terrorism detainees in CIA custody.


title: CIA black sites

text: On October 4, 2007, "The New York Times" reported that, shortly after Alberto Gonzales became Attorney General in February 2005, the Justice Department issued a secret opinion which for the first time provided CIA explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. This was in direct opposition to a public legal opinion issued in December 2004 that declared torture "abhorrent". Gonzales reportedly approved the legal memorandum on "combined effects" over the objections of James B. Comey, the outgoing deputy attorney general, who told colleagues at the Justice Department that they would all be "ashamed" when the world eventually learned of it. According to the "Times" report, the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums.


title: CIA black sites

text: Patrick Leahy and John Conyers, chairmen of the respective Senate and House Judiciary committees, requested that the Justice Department turn over documents related to the secret February 2005 legal opinion to their committees for review. The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, John D. Rockefeller IV, wrote to acting attorney general Peter D. Keisler, asking for copies of all opinions on interrogation since 2004. "I find it unfathomable that the committee tasked with oversight of the C.I.A.'s detention and interrogation program would be provided more information by The New York Times than by the Department of Justice", Rockefeller's letter read in part. On October 5, 2007, President George W. Bush responded, saying "This government does not torture people. You know, we stick to U.S. law and our international obligations." Bush said that the interrogation techniques "have been fully disclosed to appropriate members of Congress".


title: CIA black sites

text: On October 11, 2007, "The New York Times" reported that Michael Hayden had ordered an unusual internal inquiry into the work of the agency's inspector general, John L. Helgerson, whose aggressive investigations of the CIA's detention and interrogation programs and other matters have created resentment among agency operatives. The inquiry is reportedly being overseen by Robert L. Deitz, a lawyer who served as general counsel at the National Security Agency when Michael Hayden ran it, and also includes Michael Morell, the agency's associate deputy director.


title: CIA black sites

text: A report by Helgerson's office completed in the spring of 2004 warned that some CIA-approved interrogation procedures appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as defined by the international Convention Against Torture. Some of the inspector general's work on detention issues was conducted by Mary O. McCarthy, who was fired from the agency in 2006 after being accused of leaking classified information. Helgerson's office is reportedly nearing completion on a number of inquiries into CIA detention, interrogation, and renditions. Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees expressed concern about the inquiry, saying that it could undermine the inspector general's role as independent watchdog. Senator Ron Wyden (D–Oregon) said he was sending a letter to Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, asking him to instruct Hayden to drop the inquiry.


title: CIA black sites

text: In an October 30, 2007, address to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Hayden defended the agency's interrogation methods, saying, "Our programs are as lawful as they are valuable." Asked a question about waterboarding, Hayden mentioned attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey, saying, "Judge Mukasey cannot nor can I answer your question in the abstract. I need to understand the totality of the circumstances in which this question is being posed before I can give you an answer."


title: CIA black sites

text: On December 6, 2007, the CIA admitted that it had destroyed videotapes recordings of CIA interrogations of terrorism suspects involving harsh interrogation techniques, tapes which critics suggest may have documented the use of torture by the CIA, such as waterboarding. The tapes were made in 2002 as part of a secret detention and interrogation program, and were destroyed in November 2005. The reason cited for the destruction of the tapes was that the tapes posed a security risk for the interrogators shown on the tapes. Yet the department also stated that the tapes "had no more intelligence value and were not relevant to any inquiries". In response, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Michigan) stated: "You'd have to burn every document at the CIA that has the identity of an agent on it under that theory." Other Democrats in Congress also made public statements of outrage about the destruction of the tapes, suggesting that a violation of law had occurred.


title: CIA black sites

text: After a media and public outcry in Europe concerning headlines about "secret CIA prisons" in Poland and other US allies, the EU through its Committee on Legal Affairs investigated whether any of its members, especially Poland, the Czech Republic or Romania had any of these "secret CIA prisons". After an investigation by the EU Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, the EU determined that it could not find any of these prisons. In fact, they could not prove if they had ever existed at all. To quote the report, "At this stage of the investigations, there is no formal, irrefutable evidence of the existence of secret CIA detention centres in Romania, Poland or any other country. Nevertheless, there are many indications from various sources which must be considered reliable, justifying the continuation of the analytical and investigative work."


title: CIA black sites

text: Nonetheless, the CIA's alleged programme prompted several official investigations in Europe into the existence of such secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving Council of Europe member states. A June 2006 report from the Council of Europe estimated 100 people had been kidnapped by the CIA on EU territory (with the cooperation of Council of Europe members), and rendered to other countries, often after having transited through secret detention centres ("black sites") used by the CIA, some located in Europe. According to the separate European Parliament report of February 2007, the CIA has conducted 1,245 flights, many of them to destinations where suspects could face torture, in violation of article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.


title: CIA black sites

text: In November 2005, "El País" reported that CIA planes had landed in the Canary Islands and in Palma de Mallorca. A state prosecutor opened up an investigation concerning these landings which, according to Madrid, were made without official knowledge, thus being a breach of national sovereignty.


title: CIA black sites

text: The prosecutor of Bobigny court, in France, opened up an investigation in order "to verify the presence in Le Bourget Airport, on July 20, 2005, of the plane numbered N50BH". This instruction was opened following a complaint deposed in December 2005 by the "Ligue des droits de l'homme" (LDH) NGO ("Human Rights League") and the "International Federation of Human Rights Leagues" (FIDH) NGO on charges of "arbitrary detention", "crime of torture" and "non-respect of the rights of war prisoners". It has as objective to determine if the plane was used to transport CIA prisoners to Guantanamo Bay detainment camp and if the French authorities had knowledge of this stop. However, the lawyer representing the LDH declared that he was surprised that the judicial investigation was only opened on January 20, 2006, and that no verifications had been done before.


title: CIA black sites

text: On December 2, 2005, conservative newspaper "Le Figaro" had revealed the existence of two CIA planes that had landed in France, suspected of transporting CIA prisoners. But the instruction concerned only N50BH, which was a Gulfstream III, which would have landed at Le Bourget on July 20, 2005, coming from Oslo, Norway. The other suspected aircraft would have landed in Brest on March 31, 2002. It is investigated by the Canadian authorities, as it would have been flying from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada, via Keflavík in Iceland before going to Turkey.


title: CIA black sites

text: On February 5, 2007, Portuguese general prosecutor Cândida Almeida, head of the Central Investigation and Penal Action Department (DCIAP), announced an investigation of "torture or inhuman and cruel treatment", prompted by allegations of "illegal activities and serious human rights violations" made by MEP Ana Gomes to the attorney general, Pinto Monteiro, on January 26, 2007.


title: CIA black sites

text: Gomes was highly critical of the Portuguese government's reluctance to comply with the European Parliament Commission investigation into the CIA flights, leading to tensions with Foreign Minister Luís Amado, a member of her party. She said she had no doubt that illegal flights were frequently permitted during the Durão Barroso (2002–2004) and Santana Lopes (2004–2005) governments, and that "during the [present Socialist] government of José Sócrates, 24 flights which passed through Portuguese territory" are documented. She expressed satisfaction with the opening of the investigation, but emphasized that she had always said a parliamentary inquiry would also be necessary.


title: CIA black sites

text: "Visão" magazine journalist Rui Costa Pinto also testified before the DCIAP. He had written an article, rejected by the magazine, about flights passing through Lajes Field in the Azores, a Portuguese airbase used by the U.S. Air Force. Costa Pinto wrote a book about his investigation.


title: CIA black sites

text: In January 2012, Poland's Prosecutor General's office initiated investigative proceedings against Zbigniew Siemiątkowski, the former Polish intelligence chief. Siemiątkowski is charged with facilitating the alleged CIA detention operation in Poland, where foreign suspects may have been tortured in the context of the War on Terror. The alleged constitutional and international law trespasses took place when Leszek Miller, presently member of parliament and leader of the Democratic Left Alliance, was Prime Minister (2001–2004), and he may also be subjected to future legal action (a trial before the State Tribunal of the Republic of Poland).


title: CIA black sites

text: The future robustness of the highly secret investigation, in progress since 2008, may however be in some doubt. According to the leading Polish newspaper "Gazeta Wyborcza", soon after Siemiątkowski was charged by the prosecutors in Warsaw, the case was transferred and is now expected to be handled by a different prosecutorial team in Cracow. The United States authorities have refused to cooperate with the investigation and the turning over of the relevant documents to the prosecution by the unwilling Intelligence Agency was forced only after the statutory intervention of the First President of the Supreme Court of Poland.


title: CIA black sites

text: Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri are said to have been held and subjected to physical punishments at the Stare Kiejkuty intelligence base in northeastern Poland.


title: CIA black sites

text: The European Union (EU) as well as the Council of Europe pledged to investigate the allegations. On November 25, 2005, the lead investigator for the Council of Europe, Swiss lawmaker Dick Marty announced that he had obtained latitude and longitude coordinates for suspected black sites, and he was planning to use satellite imagery over the last several years as part of his investigation. On November 28, 2005, EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini asserted that any EU country which had operated a secret prison would have its voting rights suspended. On December 13, 2005, Marty, investigating illegal CIA activity in Europe on behalf of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, reported evidence that "individuals had been abducted and transferred to other countries without respect for any legal standards". His investigation has found that no evidence exists establishing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Europe, but added that it was "highly unlikely" that European governments were unaware of the American program of renditions. However, Marty's interim report, which was based largely on a compendium of press clippings has been harshly criticised by the governments of various EU member states. The preliminary report declared that it was "highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware" of the CIA kidnapping of a "hundred" persons on European territory and their subsequent rendition to countries where they may be tortured.


title: CIA black sites

text: On April 21, 2006, "The New York Times" reported that European investigators said they had not been able to find conclusive evidence of the existence of European black sites.


title: CIA black sites

text: On June 27, 2007, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe voted on Resolution 1562 and Recommendation 1801 backing the conclusions of the report by Dick Marty. The Assembly declared that it was established with a high degree of probability that secret detention centres had been operated by the CIA under the High Value Detainee (HVD) program for some years in Poland and Romania.


title: CIA black sites

text: In its edition of January 8, 2006, the Swiss newspaper "Sonntagsblick" published a document intercepted on November 10 by the Swiss Onyx interception system (similar to the UKUSA's ECHELON system). Purportedly sent by the Egyptian embassy in London to foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the document states that 23 Iraqi and Afghan citizens were interrogated at Mihail Kogălniceanu base near Constanța, Romania. According to the same document, similar interrogation centers exist in Bulgaria, Kosovo, the Republic of Macedonia, and Ukraine.


title: CIA black sites

text: The Egyptian Foreign Ministry later explained that the intercepted fax was merely a review of the Romanian press done by the Egyptian Embassy in Bucharest. It probably referred to a statement by controversial Senator and Great Romania party leader Corneliu Vadim Tudor.


title: CIA black sites

text: The Swiss government did not officially confirm the existence of the report, but started a judiciary procedure for leakage of secret documents against the newspaper on January 9, 2006.


title: CIA black sites

text: The European Parliament's report, adopted by a large majority (382 MEPs voting in favor, 256 against and 74 abstaining) passed on February 14, 2007, concludes that many European countries tolerated illegal actions of the CIA including secret flights over their territories. The countries named were: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Although no clear evidence have been found against the United Kingdom. The report:


title: CIA black sites

text: denounces the lack of co-operation of many member states and of the Council of the European Union with the investigation; Regrets that European countries have been relinquishing control over their airspace and airports by turning a blind eye or admitting flights operated by the CIA which, on some occasions, were being used for illegal transportation of detainees; Calls for the closure of [the US military detention mission in] Guantanamo and for European countries immediately to seek the return of their citizens and residents who are being held illegally by the US authorities; Considers that all European countries should initiate independent investigations into all stopovers by civilian aircraft [hired by] the CIA; Urges that a ban or system of inspections be introduced for all CIA-operated aircraft known to have been involved in extraordinary rendition.


title: CIA black sites

text: The report criticized a number of European countries (including Austria, Italy, Poland along with Portugal) for their "unwillingness to co-operate" with investigators and the action of secret services for lack of cooperation with the Parliaments' investigators and acceptal of the illegal abductions. The European Parliament voted a resolution condemning member states which accepted or ignore the practice. According to the report, the CIA had operated 1,245 flights, many of them to destinations where suspects could face torture. The Parliament also called for the creation of an independent investigation commission and the closure of Guantanamo. According to Giovanni Fava (Socialist Party), who drafted the document, there was a "strong possibility" that the intelligence obtained under the extraordinary rendition illegal program had been passed on to EU governments who were aware of how it was obtained. The report also uncovered the use of secret detention facilities used in Europe, including Romania and Poland. The report defines extraordinary renditions as instances where "an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism is illegally abducted, arrested and/or transferred into the custody of US officials and/or transported to another country for interrogation which, in the majority of cases involves incommunicado detention and torture".UK officials have further denied any claims and many investing officials agree to it that UK was not involved in the


title: CIA black sites

text: detention and torture or about hosting prisons. UK might have been a transit state but there is no proof about this either.


title: CIA black sites

text: On January 22, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order requiring the CIA to use only the 19 interrogation methods outlined in the United States Army Field Manual "unless the Attorney General with appropriate consultation provides further guidance". The order also provided that "The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future."


title: CIA black sites

text: On March 5, 2009, "Bloomberg News" reported that the United States Senate intelligence committee was beginning a one-year inquiry in the CIA's detention program.


title: CIA black sites

text: In April 2009, CIA director Leon Panetta announced that the "CIA no longer operates detention facilities or black sites", in a letter to staff and that "[r]emaining sites would be decommissioned". He also announced that the CIA was no longer allowing outside "contractors" to carry out interrogations and that the CIA no longer employed controversial "harsh interrogation techniques". Panetta informed his fellow employees that the CIA would only use interrogation techniques authorized in the US Army interrogation manual, and that any individuals taken into custody by the CIA would only be held briefly, for the time necessary to transfer them to the custody of authorities in their home countries, or the custody of another US agency.


title: CIA black sites

text: In 2011, the Obama administration admitted that it had been holding a Somali prisoner for two months aboard a U.S. naval ship at sea for interrogation.


title: CIA black sites

text: On December 9, 2014 United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) released a 525-page portion that consisted of key findings and an executive summary of the report called "Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program". The rest of the report remains classified for unpublished reasons.


title: CIA black sites

text: The 6,000-page report produced 20 key findings. They are, verbatim from the unclassified summary report:


title: CIA black sites

text: According to the report, at least 26 of the 119 prisoners (22%) held by the CIA were subsequently found by the CIA to have been improperly detained, many having also experienced torture. Of the 119 known detainees, at least 39 were subjected to the CIA enhanced interrogation techniques. In at least six cases, the CIA used torture on suspects before evaluating whether they would be willing to cooperate.


title: CIA black sites

text: On July 24, 2014, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Poland violated the European Convention on Human Rights when it cooperated with the US, allowing the CIA to hold and torture Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri on its territory in 2002–2003. The court ordered the Polish government to pay each of the men 100,000 euros in damages. It also awarded Abu Zubaydah 30,000 euros to cover his costs.


title: CIA black sites

text: On 31 May 2018, the ECHR ruled that Romania and Lithuania also violated the rights of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in 2003–2005 and in 2005–2006 respectively, and Lithuania and Romania were ordered to pay 100,000 euros in damages each to Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: The German aircraft carrier "Graf Zeppelin" was the lead ship in a class of two carriers of the same name ordered by the "Kriegsmarine" of Nazi Germany. She was the only aircraft carrier launched by Germany and represented part of the "Kriegsmarine"s attempt to create a well-balanced oceangoing fleet, capable of projecting German naval power far beyond the narrow confines of the Baltic and North Seas. The carrier would have had a complement of 42 fighters and dive bombers.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: Construction on "Graf Zeppelin" began on 28 December 1936, when her keel was laid down at the Deutsche Werke shipyard in Kiel. Named in honor of "Graf" (Count) Ferdinand von Zeppelin, the ship was launched on 8 December 1938, and was 85% complete by the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. "Graf Zeppelin" was not completed and was never operational due to shifting construction priorities necessitated by the war. She remained in the Baltic for the duration of the war; with Germany's defeat imminent, the ship's custodian crew scuttled her just outside Stettin in March 1945. The Soviet Union raised the ship in March 1946, and she was ultimately sunk in weapons tests north of Poland 17 months later. The wreck was discovered by a Polish survey ship in July 2006.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: "Graf Zeppelin" was long overall; she had a beam of and a maximum draft of . At full combat load, she would have displaced . The ship's propulsion system consisted of four Brown, Boveri & Cie geared turbines with sixteen oil-fired, ultra-high-pressure LaMont boilers. The power plant was rated at and a top speed of . "Graf Zeppelin" had a projected cruising radius of at a speed of . She would have had a crew of 1760 officers and enlisted men, plus flight crews.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: The ship's primary offensive power would have been its aircraft complement. "Graf Zeppelin" would have carried 42 aircraft as designed: 12 navalized Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bombers, 10 Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters, and 20 Fieseler Fi 167 torpedo bombers. Later during the construction process, the aerial complement was reworked to consist of thirty Ju 87s and twelve Bf 109s, and the Fi 167s were removed altogether. As designed, "Graf Zeppelin" was to be fitted with eight 15 cm SK C/28 guns for defense against surface warships. This number was later increased to sixteen. Her anti-aircraft battery consisted of ten 10.5 cm SK C/33 guns—later increased to twelve—twenty-two 3.7 cm SK C/30 guns, and twenty-eight 2 cm guns. The ship's flight deck was protected with up to of "Wotan Weich" steel armor. A armored deck was located under the deck to protect the ship's vitals from aerial attacks. "Graf Zeppelin" had a waterline armor belt that was thick in the central area of the ship.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: On 16 November 1935, the contract for "Flugzeugträger A" (Aircraft carrier A)—later christened "Graf Zeppelin"—was awarded to the Deutsche Werke shipyard in Kiel. Construction of the ship was delayed since Deutsche Werke was working at capacity, and the slipway needed for "Graf Zeppelin" was occupied by the new battleship , which was launched on 8 December 1936. Work started on "Graf Zeppelin" on 28 December, when her keel was laid down. She was launched on 8 December 1938, the 24th anniversary of the Battle of the Falkland Islands, and she was christened by Helene von Zeppelin, the daughter of the ship's namesake. At the launching ceremony, Hermann Göring gave a speech. By the end of 1939, she was 85% complete, with a projected completion by the middle of 1940. By September 1939, one carrier-borne wing, "Trägergruppe" 186, had been formed by the Luftwaffe at Kiel Holtenau, composed of three squadrons equipped with Bf 109s and Ju 87s.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: Meanwhile, the German conquest of Norway in April 1940 eroded any chance of completing "Graf Zeppelin". Now responsible for defending Norway's long coastline and numerous port facilities, the "Kriegsmarine" urgently needed large numbers of coastal guns and anti-aircraft batteries. During a naval conference with Hitler on 28 April 1940, Admiral Erich Raeder proposed halting all work on "Graf Zeppelin", arguing that even if she was commissioned by the end of 1940, final installation of her guns would need another ten months or more (her original fire-control system had been sold to the Soviet Union under an earlier trade agreement). Hitler consented to the stop work order, allowing Raeder to have "Graf Zeppelin"s 15 cm guns removed and transferred to Norway. The carrier's heavy flak armament of twelve 10.5 cm guns had already been diverted elsewhere.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: In July 1940, "Graf Zeppelin" was towed from Kiel to Gotenhafen (Gdynia) and remained there for nearly a year. While there, she was used as a storage depot for Germany's hardwood supply. Just before Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the carrier was again moved, this time to Stettin, to safeguard her from Soviet air attacks. By November, the German army had pushed deep enough into Russian territory to remove any further threat of air attack and "Graf Zeppelin" was returned to Gotenhafen. There, she was used as a store ship for timber.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: By the time Raeder met with Hitler for a detailed discussion of naval strategy in April 1942, the usefulness of aircraft carriers in modern naval warfare had been amply demonstrated. British carriers had crippled the Italian fleet at Taranto in November 1940, critically damaged the in May 1941 and prevented the battleship from attacking two convoys bound for Russia in March 1942. In addition, a Japanese carrier raid on Pearl Harbor had devastated the American battle fleet in December 1941. Raeder, anxious to secure air protection for the "Kriegsmarine"s heavier surface units, informed Hitler that "Graf Zeppelin" could be finished in about a year, with another six months required for sea trials and flight training. On 13 May 1942, with Hitler's authorization, the German Naval Supreme Command ordered work resumed on the carrier.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: But daunting technical problems remained. Raeder wanted newer planes, specifically designed for carrier use. "Reichsmarshall" Hermann Göring, head of the "Luftwaffe", replied that the already overburdened German aircraft industry could not possibly complete the design, testing and mass production of such aircraft before 1946. Instead, he proposed converting existing aircraft (again the Junkers Ju 87 and Messerschmitt Bf 109) as a temporary solution until newer types could be developed. Training of carrier pilots at Travemünde would also resume.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: The converted carrier aircraft were heavier versions of their land-based predecessors and this required a host of changes to "Graf Zeppelin"s original design: the existing catapults needed modernization; stronger winches were necessary for the arresting gear; the flight deck, elevators and hangar floors also required reinforcement. Changes in naval technology dictated other alterations as well: installation of air search radar sets and antennas; upgraded radio equipment; an armored fighter-director cabin mounted on the main mast (which in turn meant a heavier, sturdier mast to accommodate the cabin's added weight); extra armoring for the bridge and fire control center; a new curved funnel cap to shield the fighter-director cabin from smoke; replacing the single-mount 20mm AA guns with quadruple "Flakvierling" 38 guns (with a corresponding increase in ammunition supply) to improve overall AA defense; and additional bulges on either side of the hull to preserve the ship's stability under all this added weight.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: The German naval staff hoped all these changes could be accomplished by April 1943, with the carrier's first sea trials taking place in August that year. Towards that end, Chief Engineer Wilhelm Hadeler was reassigned to oversee "Graf Zeppelin"s completion. Hadeler planned on getting the two inner shafts and their respective propulsion systems operational first, giving the ship an initial speed of 25–26 knots, fast enough for sea trials to commence and for conducting air training exercises. By the winter of 1943–1944 she was expected to be combat-ready.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: On the night of 27–28 August 1942, while still moored at Gotenhafen, "Graf Zeppelin" was the target of the only Allied air attack aimed at her during the war. Three Royal Air Force Avro Lancaster heavy bombers from 106 Squadron were dispatched against the German aircraft carrier, each one carrying a single "Capital Ship" bomb, a device with a shaped charge warhead intended for armored targets. One pilot, who was unable to see the carrier due to haze, dropped his bomb instead on the estimated position of the . Another believed he had scored a direct hit on "Graf Zeppelin", but there is no known record of the ship suffering any damage from a bomb strike that night.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: On 5 December 1942, "Graf Zeppelin" was towed back to Kiel and placed in a floating drydock. It seemed she might well see completion after all, but by late January 1943 Hitler had become so disenchanted with the "Kriegsmarine", especially with what he perceived as the poor performance of its surface fleet, that he ordered all of its larger ships taken out of service and scrapped. Raeder was relieved of command shortly thereafter and replaced with the Commander of Submarines Karl Dönitz. Though Admiral Dönitz eventually persuaded Hitler to void most of the order, work on all new surface ships and even those nearing completion, including "Graf Zeppelin", was halted. On 30 January 1943, all major work on the ship ceased, though some limited, temporary work continued until March.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: In April 1943 "Graf Zeppelin" was again towed eastward, first to Gotenhafen, then to the roadstead at Swinemünde and finally berthed at a back-water wharf in the Parnitz River, two miles (3 km) from Stettin, where she had been briefly docked in 1941. There she languished for the next two years with only a 40-man custodial crew in attendance. When Red Army forces neared the city in April 1945, the ship's Kingston valves were opened, flooding her lower spaces and settling her firmly into the mud in shallow water. A ten-man engineering squad then rigged the vessel's interior with demolition and depth charges in order to hole the hull and destroy vital machinery. At 6pm on 25 April 1945, just as the Soviets entered Stettin, commander Wolfgang Kähler radioed the squad to detonate the explosives. Smoke billowing from the carrier's funnel confirmed the charges had gone off, rendering the ship useless to her new owners for many months to come.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: The carrier's history and fate after Germany's surrender was unknown outside the Soviet Union for decades after the war. The Soviets could not repair the ship in the length of time specified by the terms of the Allied Tripartite Commission, so she was designated a "Category C" ship. This classification required that she would be destroyed or sunk in deep water by 15 August 1946. Instead, the Soviets decided to salvage the damaged ship and it was refloated in March 1946. A number of speculations from Western historians about the ship's fate arose in the decades after the end of the war. According to German historian Erich Gröner, after the Soviets raised the scuttled ship, they towed her to Leningrad. While en route, she reportedly struck a mine off Finland during a storm. Gröner claimed that after arriving in Leningrad, "Graf Zeppelin" was broken up for scrap in 1948–1949. Naval historians Robert Gardiner and Roger Chesneau state that the ship was towed out of Stettin in September 1947, but she never arrived in Leningrad; they speculated that a mine sank the ship while she was under tow.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: According to Soviet records, on 19 March 1947, the Council of Ministers decreed the destruction of former German ships. The first ship to be sunk, "Lützow", was sunk off Swinemunde on 22 July 1947. On 14 August "Graf Zeppelin" was towed into Swinemunde harbor, and two days later to its final position. It was subjected to five series of controlled explosions of shells and FAB series bombs. The first test imitated a FAB-1000 detonation in the exhaust funnel and lesser bombs below the flight deck. The second in the series was a single FAB-1000 explosion above the flight deck. The third, the fourth and the fifth series imitated penetration of FAB-100, FAB-250 and FAB-500 bombs at flight deck, hangar deck and gun battery deck levels. These bombs were placed in cutouts in their target decks to imitate the effects of dive bombing. "Graf Zeppelin" remained afloat, and Admiral Yury Rall ordered a torpedo strike. A torpedo fired from an Elco PT boat exploded in the anti-torpedo bulge but did not penetrate the belt armor. A torpedo fired by the destroyer "Slavny" penetrated the unprotected hull section below the bow elevator; "Graf Zeppelin" sank 25 minutes later.


title: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

text: The exact position of the wreck was unknown for decades. On 12 July 2006, the research vessel , a ship belonging to the Polish oil company Petrobaltic, found a wreck north of Władysławowo, which they thought was most likely "Graf Zeppelin". The wreck rests at a depth of more than below the surface. After the wreck was located, the Polish Navy began a two-day survey of the wreckage to confirm its identity. Using remote-controlled underwater robots, they concluded that they were "99% certain" it was "Graf Zeppelin".


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: Princess Margaret of Connaught (Margaret Victoria Charlotte Augusta Norah; 15 January 1882 – 1 May 1920) was Crown Princess of Sweden as the first wife of the future King Gustaf VI Adolf. She was the elder daughter of Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, third son of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, and his wife Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia. Known in Sweden as Margareta, her marriage produced five children, and she is the grandmother of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and Queens Margrethe II of Denmark and Anne-Marie of Greece. She died 30 years before her husband's accession to the throne of Sweden.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: Princess Margaret was born at Bagshot Park and baptised in the Private Chapel of Windsor Castle on 11 March 1882 by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Her godparents were Queen Victoria (her paternal grandmother); the German Emperor (her maternal great-granduncle, who was represented by the German Ambassador, Count Münster); the German Crown Princess (her paternal aunt, who was represented by her sister, Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein); Prince and Princess Friedrich Karl of Prussia (her maternal grandparents, for whom her paternal uncle the Duke of Edinburgh and aunt Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom stood proxy); the Duchess of Cambridge (who was represented by Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll); the Prince of Wales (her paternal uncle) and Prince Charles of Prussia (her great-grandfather, represented by Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany). She was known as "Daisy" to her family.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: Princess Margaret grew up as a member of the British royal family, taking part in family holidays and weddings. She was a bridesmaid along with her sister at the wedding of their paternal cousins the Duke and Duchess of York on 6 July 1893.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: When Princess Margaret of Connaught was 23 and her younger sister Princess Patricia of Connaught was 18, both girls were among the most beautiful and eligible princesses in Europe. Their uncle, Edward VII, wanted his nieces to marry a European king or crown prince. In January 1905, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught visited Portugal, where they were received by King Carlos and his wife, Amélie of Orléans, whose sons Luís Filipe, Duke of Braganza and Prince Manuel entertained the young British princesses. The Portuguese expected one of the Connaught princesses would become the future Queen of Portugal.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: The Connaughts continued their trip to Egypt and Sudan. In Cairo, they met Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden, the future Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden, grandson of the Swedish King Oscar II. Originally, Margaret's sister Patricia had been considered a suitable match for Gustaf Adolf; without his knowledge, a meeting was arranged with the two sisters. Gustaf Adolf and Margaret fell in love at first sight; he proposed at a dinner held by Lord Cromer at the British Consulate in Egypt and was accepted. Margaret's parents were very happy with the match.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: Gustaf Adolf and Margaret married on 15 June 1905 in St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. The couple spent their honeymoon at Adare Manor in County Limerick, Ireland, and arrived in Sweden on 8 July 1905.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: One of Margaret's wedding presents was the Connaught tiara, which remains in the Swedish royal jewellery collection today.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: Margaret was a dedicated mother to her children, and was determined to spend time with them. She was not keen on letting them be raised by nursery staff, as was the convention of the day.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: When Gustaf Adolf's father, Crown Prince Gustaf, acceded to the throne as King Gustaf V in 1907, the couple became Crown Prince and Princess of Sweden.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: The marriage between Margaret and Gustaf Adolf is described as a happy love match. Gustaf Adolf felt great pressure from the "Prussian" military discipline with which he had been raised by his mother, and he was greatly affected by and attracted to Margaret's differing English customs. The visiting Infanta Eulalia of Spain wrote that the Crown Princess gave the Swedish court "just a touch of the elegance of the Court of St James's" and of how much Margaret loved her life in Sweden.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: After her arrival in Sweden, Margaret, who in Sweden was called "Margareta", received lessons in the Swedish language, and asked to be educated in Swedish history and social welfare. After two years, she spoke good Swedish. She was also eager to find out more about Sweden, and on many occasions went on incognito trips. During her first years in Sweden, Margaret behaved with great seriousness and was therefore regarded as stiff, but the view of her changed because of her great interest in sports, where she showed a more relaxed and natural manner. Margaret took a great interest in many forms of sports; she used the winters for skiing, ice skating and playing hockey (what is nowadays called bandy), and played tennis and golf during the summers. She also corresponded with various relatives.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: Margaret was also interested in art, and was an admirer of the works of Claude Monet. She photographed, painted, and took a great interest in gardening. She and her spouse received Sofiero Palace as a wedding gift, and they spent their summers there and made a great effort creating gardens in an English style on the estate; her children participated in their improvement. In 1915, Margaret as "Kronprinsessan Margareta" published the book "Vår trädgård på Sofiero" ("Our Garden at Sofiero") and two years later also "Från blomstergården" ("From the Flower Garden") illustrated with her own drawings and photographs, which were sold for the benefit of household schools with childcare.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: During World War I, Margaret created a sewing society in Sweden to support the Red Cross. The society was called "Kronprinsessans Centralförråd för landstormsmäns beklädnad och utrustning" ("The Crown Princess's central storage for clothing and equipment of the home guard"), which was to equip the Swedish armed forces with suitable underwear. When paraffin supplies ran low she organized a candle collection, and in November 1917 she instituted a scheme to train girls to work on the land. She also acted as intermediary for relatives separated by the war. With her help, private letters and requests to trace men missing in action were passed on. She was also active in her work on behalf of prisoners. She aided prisoners of war in camps around Europe, especially British nationals. Margaret's efforts during the war were pro-British, in contrast to her mother-in-law's strictly pro-German attitude. In 1917, Margaret organized "Margaretainsamlingen för de fattiga" ("The Margaret fundraiser for the poor"). At the end of the war, when the final steps towards full democracy were taken in Sweden, Margaret's positive attitude to reform influenced her husband the Crown Prince. Unlike the attitude of her reform-hostile in-laws, King Gustaf and Queen Victoria, this is believed to have eased political tensions and preserved the Swedish monarchy.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: At 2 o'clock in the morning on Saturday, 1 May 1920, her father's 70th birthday, Crown Princess Margaret died suddenly in Stockholm of "blood poisoning" (sepsis). Some time before this she had suffered from measles, which aggravated her ear, and she underwent surgery to remove a mastoid. Since the previous Sunday, she had been suffering from pain in her face from something below her eye, and doctors decided to perform another procedure. On Thursday, symptoms of erysipelas appeared under her right ear. She fell gravely ill on Friday night when symptoms of sepsis became evident, and she died within hours. At the time, she was eight months pregnant with her sixth child. In announcing her death during traditional International Workers' Day celebrations, Swedish Prime Minister Hjalmar Branting said: "the ray of sunshine at Stockholm Palace has gone out" ("Solstrålen på Stockholms slott har slocknat").


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: In Britain, there had been reports that Margaret was unhappy in Sweden and there were dubious rumours at her death that it actually had been a suicide.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: Princess Margaret was buried according to her specific and detailed wishes, written in 1914. She asked to be buried in her wedding dress and her veil, with a crucifix in her hands, in a simple coffin made from English oak and covered in British and Swedish flags. She requested that there should be no lying-in-state after her death.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: In 2021, an exhibition "Daisy. Crown Princess Margareta, 1882–1920" opened at the Royal Palace in Stockholm.


title: Princess Margaret of Connaught

text: Upon her marriage in 1905, Princess Margaret adopted the arms of a Princess of Sweden and Duchess of Scania, with an inescutcheon of her previous arms: the arms of the United Kingdom, with an inescutcheon of Saxony, the whole differenced by a label argent of five points, the first and fifth bearing fleurs-de-lys azure, the second and fourth shamrocks vert, and the central point a cross gules. The inescutcheon of Saxony was removed by King George V in 1917.


title: L118 light gun

text: The L118 light gun is a 105 mm towed howitzer. It was originally designed and produced in England for the British Army in the 1970s. It has since been widely exported. The L119 and the United States Army's M119 are variants that use a different type of ammunition.


title: L118 light gun

text: From 1961 to 1975, the British Army had the widely used 105 mm OTO Melara Mod 56, which it called the "L5 pack howitzer", with L10 ordnance as its light artillery weapon, replacing the 75 mm howitzer, 4.2 inch mortar and 25-pounder gun in eight regular artillery regiments. It fires the US M1 type ammunition (called "105 mm How" in the UK). The Mod 56 was originally designed in Italy for its mountain artillery units. It was light enough to be lifted by Westland Wessex helicopters or towed by Land Rovers. It could also be dismantled, with no piece heavier than 128 kg, to be transported by mules or horses. It lacked range (making it potentially vulnerable to counter-battery fire), was not notably robust, had poor sights and was not universally liked. Nor were its rate of fire and time to prepare for opening fire satisfactory.


title: L118 light gun

text: In 1965, a general staff requirement was approved for a new 105 mm weapon system because the L5 pack howitzer "lacked range and lethality". Key characteristics included 6400 mil (360°) traverse by one soldier, maximum weight of , small enough size to be carried inside new Chinook helicopters and Andover transport aircraft, and ability to fire immediately after being under water for 30 minutes. The ammunition to be used was the 105 mm Fd Mk 2 ammunition used in the L13 ordnance of the gun equipment 105 mm L109 (better known as the "Abbot self-propelled gun"). This ammunition uses electrical instead of percussion primers and is an entirely different design from the US M1 type ammunition as used in the L5 pack howitzer. The two types are not interchangeable. An early requirement was for the new weapon to use 105 mm Fd Mk 1 ammunition, which uses the M1 shell, in training. However, in 1968, this was changed to allow a different version of the weapon, which subsequently became the L119, to fire US 1935 pattern (i.e. M1) ammunition.


title: L118 light gun

text: The new gun, soon designated "light gun", was designed by the government Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment (RARDE), Fort Halstead, Kent. Prototypes were tested in 1968. It soon emerged that some increase in weight was needed for the requisite robustness, and several assemblies were substantially redesigned.


title: L118 light gun

text: Original production, which was authorised in late 1975, was by Royal Ordnance Factory, ROF Nottingham, which has since been incorporated into BAE Systems Land and Armaments. Deliveries started in 1976.


title: L118 light gun

text: The light gun entered service with the British Army in 1976. It was heavier than its predecessor, but helicopters that could carry it, such as the Puma and Westland Sea King, were entering service at the same time. A new vehicle, the Land Rover 101 Forward Control ("Land Rover, one-ton"), was designed as its prime mover in the field (and also for the Rapier air-defence missile launcher). Since the end of the 1990s, the British Army has used Pinzgauer ATVs as their gun tractors. In Arctic service, and elsewhere, the gun is towed by the Hägglunds Bv 206 and is fitted with skis when over snow.


title: L118 light gun

text: In 1982, five batteries (30 guns) were deployed to the Falkland Islands during the Falklands War. In the final phases of the battles around Port Stanley, these guns were firing up to 400 rounds per gun a day, mostly at "charge super", the most powerful propellant charge for which they were designed. They were a significant factor in the British victory.


title: L118 light gun

text: At present, the British Army has four light gun regiments: 3rd Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, 4th Regiment Royal Artillery, 7th (Parachute) Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, and 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery. Other regiments are temporarily equipped with it for service in Afghanistan. The 14 (Training) Regiment Royal Artillery uses it for training at the Royal School of Artillery.


title: L118 light gun

text: Four regiments of the Army Reserve, The Honourable Artillery Company (HAC), 103rd (Lancashire Artillery Volunteers) Regiment Royal Artillery, 104th Regiment Royal Artillery and 105th Regiment Royal Artillery) are also equipped with the light gun. Those University Officer Training Corps with "gun troops" train with the L118.


title: L118 light gun

text: On 30 November 2001, an L118 light gun replaced a 25-pounder as the One O'Clock Gun in Edinburgh Castle. By tradition, this fires at one o'clock every afternoon, except on Sundays, Good Friday and Christmas Day. The light gun is also fired by 14 (Training) Regiment Royal Artillery on Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day each year.


title: L118 light gun

text: The L118 uses the L19 ordnance on the L17 carriage. The L19 ordnance is slightly shorter than the L13 used by the Abbot and hence has a slightly shorter maximum range. Also, unlike the Abbot, the barrel is autofrettaged and hence lighter.


title: L118 light gun

text: The light gun appears to owe a number of its features to the QF 25 pounder, unsurprisingly since RARDE was the successor to the design department, Woolwich Arsenal. Among these features are its vertically sliding block breech, and a box trail instead of a split trail; a traversing platform is normally used with it. Its comparatively light weight is also attributed to the nature of the steel used in the carriage and ordnance, and other weight-reducing features, including its narrow wheelbase.


title: L118 light gun

text: The narrow wheelbase prevents the ordnance rotating the 3200 mil (180°) required to 'unfold' the gun. Because of this, the gun features a knock-off hub on one side allowing the ordnance to be rotated by removing one wheel. With a well trained gun crew, this contributes approximately 30 seconds to the time required to deploy the gun. In British service, rotating the barrel for towing is optional.