In the years following 9/11, North Carolina was used as a staging ground to launch flights that picked up suspected terrorists abroad and transported them to CIA "black sites" and third-party countries where they were illegally detained and tortured. 

Declassified documents and news reports have confirmed that the CIA front company Aero Contractors, headquartered here, used North Carolina's aviation infrastructure and public airports to launch these "torture taxi" flights in support of the United States' Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation (RDI) program. 

The North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture is a non-profit organization dedicated to investigating and establishing public accountability for the role that North Carolina's government and state resources played in helping to facilitate the U.S. torture program.

The NCCIT has formed a blue-ribbon panel of policy experts, academics, and community leaders to do the job their government refuses to do: investigate North Carolina’s involvement in the U.S. torture program, prevent it from happening again and make North Carolina a leader against torture. 

The Libertarian Party of North Carolina supports the work of the NCCIT and calls for real accountability, including prosecuting all of those who authorized and performed these brutal acts. 

“Torture is always immoral, illegal, repulsive, un-American, generally ineffective, and ultimately counterproductive,” said Brian Irving, state chair. “By resorting to the barbaric tactics of our enemies, we not only surrender the moral high ground and create more enemies, we degrade and betray the very values Americans cherish.” 

“While national defense requires we have adequate intelligence to detect and to counter threats, this need should never take priority over maintaining the civil liberties guaranteed to all persons in our country by the Constitution,” Irving added.

Read the News & Observer article.