End unlawful detentions
Reprieve fights for people indefinitely detained without trial.
From CIA torture chambers to “Europe’s Guantánamo” in North East Syria.
Add your name today to join our call for the UK government to bring UK families back safely from North East Syria.
How it started
Reprieve’s work on unlawful detention began in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The US and its allies used flawed intelligence to round up huge numbers of people – almost all of them Muslim men and boys – and rendered them to torture sites run by the CIA, then to the prison at Guantánamo Bay.
Our lawyers were among the first to get into Guantánamo in 2002. We won the release of 80 men. We’re still fighting for people indefinitely imprisoned without trial.
We eventually won the release of 80 men from prison.
Unlawful Detention in North East Syria
Today, that work continues in North East Syria and Iraq, where thousands of men, women and children are locked up without charge or trial. The prisons and detention camps have been called “Europe’s Guantánamo”. Among them are a handful of British families.
In January 2026, almost 6,000 men and boys were taken in chains from North East Syria to Iraq – rendered from one dark prison to another. They had already spent years in horrendous conditions. They had been cut off from the outside world and imprisoned without charge, because of an assumed affiliation with ISIS. They now face being sentenced to death in Iraq, in summary trials often lasting less than ten minutes.
The remaining women and children are held in a dangerous open-air prison in North East Syria that is on the brink of collapse. None of them have been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one.
How we are fighting unlawful detention
Reprieve works with the British men, women and children detained in North East Syria.
We work with their lawyers, challenging citizenship stripping and making applications to get them back home to the UK.
We engage with ministers and parliamentarians on their cases and build political support for repatriations.
We challenge the toxic narrative that women detained in Syria are “ISIS brides”, when almost two thirds of the British women unlawfully imprisoned in North East Syria are actually trafficking victims.
We host regular meetings of the Bring British Families Home group, where the families of those detained share their experiences, provide mutual support and develop advocacy strategies to get their relatives home.
Support that lasts
The harm of unlawful detention does not end with release. It is severe and enduring.
Reprieve supports people long after they have been released. Through our Life After Guantánamo project, we stand with and support survivors of Guantánamo in countries around the world. In the UK, we work with families repatriated from North East Syria as they rebuild their lives, helping give children who spent their earliest years in open-air prisons the chance of a normal childhood.
Donate
Will you chip into today? Your gift could help us get men, women and children home.
Live work
Bring the families home
British families remain unlawfully detained in North East Syria where they face torture, disappearance and death in unstable and unsafe detention camps. The UK Government must bring them home.
Death sentences in Iraq
There are British men imprisoned in Iraq, following their extraordinary rendition from North East Syria. They face being executed after trials lasting only ten minutes. The UK Government has a duty to protect them.
Survivors deserve accountability
Winning accountability for survivors of “war on terror” torture and rendition can take decades. Until we reckon with the damage done by unlawful detention, we are doomed to repeat the same terrible mistakes.
Our Impact
North East Syria
Reprieve has helped more than 100 people indefinitely imprisoned in North East Syria get out, and continues to fight for the remaining detainees.
Guantánamo
Reprieve’s lawyers were among the first to get into the prison. We helped 80 men get out – fighting the system keeping them locked up without trial.
Accountability
Reprieve has won justice for multiple survivors of post-9/11 torture and rendition. We continue to demand accountability for British complicity in “war on terror” abuses.
Latest updates
Published: 10/06/26
3 minute(s)
FOREIGN SECRETARY SAYS "DEEPLY DISTRESSING" DETENTION OF JAGTAR SINGH JOHAL HAS "GONE ON FAR TOO LONG"
After learning that the Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was to visit the Indian Prime Minister and her counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, in Delhi, we worked with MPs, family members and journalists at the Press Association to raise the case of our client, Sikh human rights activist Jagtar Singh Johal,…
Published: 28/05/26
2 minute(s)
Pressure grows on UK to repatriate its nationals from North East Syria
Our CEO Maya Foa was interviewed by Arab News, for this feature about the thousands of women and children unlawfully detained in Camp Roj in North East Syria. “Of course, I can’t say that every woman is a trafficking victim. But I’ve conducted hundreds of hours of interviews…
Published: 24/07/25
Jagtar Singh Johal 'top of the agenda' in PM talks vows Scottish Secretary
The Scottish Secretary has said that the release of Jagtar Singh Johal is “right at the top of the agenda” ahead of talks between Sir Keir Starmer and Narendra Modi in London where the two prime ministers are meeting to sign a trade deal between the two countries….
Other issues
End the death penalty
We work to prevent executions, get people off death row and campaign for abolition of the death penalty. A world without capital punishment is possible.
Stop citizenship stripping
