Barack Hussein Obama, who has said transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of his presidency, is in the final stages of ordering the dismantling of 'black sites', where CIA and European security services interrogated terrorist suspects.

The US President will order the closure of the so-called 'black sites' on Thursday under executive orders aimed at dismantling much of the Bush administration's architecture for the war on terror, The Washington Times reported.

It said Congressional committees were informally briefed about the executive orders in this regard yesterday.

Forty-seven-year-old Obama, in one of his first acts after assuming the office on Tuesday, ordered the suspension of prosecutions of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay for 120 days, keeping a poll promise in which he had vowed to close down the controversial detention facility on the Cuban island.

The President will shut "all permanent detention facilities overseas," the report on Thursday said.
According to sources, the order is in the final stages of being signed.

Though the Bush administration never revealed the number or location of the facilities, it is believed that there are at least eight such prisons, several of them in Eastern Europe.

According to unnamed individuals, there will be three executive orders. One will order the "black sites" closed and require all interrogations of detainees across the entire US.