The first renditions took place in the 1990s; the practice increased dramatically after the terror attacks on The USA on September 11th 2001 and the invasion of Afghanistan. It took some time after they began for the issue of extraordinary renditions to come to public notice. From 2002, the main issue of concern for human rights campaigners was the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay. Then, in 2004 and 2005, reports drew attention to the specific issue of covert rendition flights, and particularly to the role of European governments in cooperating secretly with the CIA to allow such “ghost flights” to use European airfields and other facilities in order to transport suspects to third party countries for special interrogations.