Not many tourist attractions promote themselves by saying “there’s nothing to see here”. But the Ramasun Camp Historical Museum in north-eastern Thailand isn’t your average destination: it’s among the locations suspected of hosting a CIA black site and secret torture prison.

A CIA black site? Or habitat to rats? Credit:Thai Ministry of Tourism

Set to open as a museum on Saturday, the base started as the US Army’s 7th Radio Research Field Station in 1964 and according to the official history was used in the Vietnam war to spy on communists and control plane movements until 1976.

Unofficially and more recently, it’s one of three sites in the remote north-eastern province of Udon Thani suspected to be part of the US Central Intelligence Agency’s worldwide network of secret locations where terrorist suspects were subjected to enhanced interrogation.

The CIA’s first international detention site was in Thailand and the network was most active in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the US, when detainees were waterboarded or had their heads slammed repeatedly into walls.