But it's been a long time since the invasion of Afghanistan. Tora BoraĪ decade ago, when everyone became an armchair general in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, most people had heard of the Tora Bora. Poland and Romania are known to have hosted black sites, and some campaigners say 17 ships were also used for the same purposes. President Bush was forced into an admission in 2006, but only after the media began to publish details of black sites around the world. For years their existence was rumoured, but denied. They were also handy stopover sites for suspects who were being transported, kidnapped really, under the extraordinary rendition programme coordinated by the CIA. Their use was authorised in the days after the 9/11 attacks as hubs for prisoners accused of terrorist involvement.
These were secret locations where bad things tended to happen – places that US government agencies used to transport, detain, and interrogate detainees. Bin Laden was a Saudi, but his closest associates were not all fellow countrymen. The group here is probably the number of detainees in CIA custody, such as Ammar, who are being interrogated, and tortured, for information leading to the whereabouts of the man who is known to them as the "emir". Confusingly for experts on Middle East construction firms, Saudi Group is the name of a vast building business in the kingdom, but this is a red herring. It is not clear whether Ammar is a Saudi, or which group is being referred to. The film starts with a reference to the Saudi group, and immediately focuses on the tribulations of a prisoner, Ammar. The phrase, it seems, doesn't refer to any single point, just night-time. Some soldiers say it refers to 12.30am, but others insist this is not true. Zero Dark Thirty is military slang, used across the services, by British and American soldiers, to describe a time after darkness has fallen. It isn't a term that is unique to the special forces units that found the al-Qaida leader hiding in Pakistan. Zero Dark Thirty isn't the name of the operation to find Bin Laden, nor is it actually mentioned anywhere in the film.
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