Romania Approved CIA Detention Site Black in October 2002 for $8 Million Initial Payment

The Rendition Project 2019 report and Guantanamo military commission filings establish that the CIA station in Bucharest began planning the site by January 2003, with the first five detainees arriving that autumn. Primary records show the facility operated under the designation Detention Site Black until the program ended in 2009. Romanian president Ion Iliescu confirmed in a 2015 Der Spiegel interview that US allies requested the site around the 2002-2003 turn and that he approved the request in principle. Court documents detail continuous lighting, sleep deprivation, and water dousing applied to detainees including Ammar al-Baluchi.

Romania received direct financial transfers at a moment of post-communist economic transition and ahead of its 2004 NATO accession and 2007 EU entry. The United States secured an additional European location after Thai and Polish sites faced operational constraints. In exchange Romania accepted operational secrecy requirements that later produced domestic institutional denials by Orniss and exposure risks once European Parliament inquiries and US court records surfaced. The arrangement aligned with US post-9/11 detention policy but created downstream admissibility problems for statements later ruled involuntary by a Guantanamo military judge in April 2025.

No Romanian government has released the full bilateral correspondence or financial ledgers. US records remain partially classified under national security claims. The 2028 trial date for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and co-defendants will test whether Romanian-site treatment continues to taint evidence. Any further declassification by either party would require overriding existing secrecy protocols without stated domestic political incentive.