After September 11, 2001, U.S. officials authorized the cruel treatment and torture of prisoners held in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, and the CIA's secret prisons overseas.

This database documents the U.S. government's official experiment with torture. At present, the database contains well over 100,000 pages of government documents obtained primarily through Freedom of Information Act litigation and requests filed by the ACLU, and through litigation of Salim v. Mitchell, a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of the survivors and the family of a dead victim of the CIA torture program. To learn more about the database, please read the About and Search Help pages. If you're a developer, you can also access this data through our API.

Search Result (6709)

RelevanceDateRelease Date
This State department cable is providing an up and status on the transfer of detainees from Afghanistan to Guantanamo. The detainees scheduled for transfer were complicated by protesters and Human Rights Chamber which purportedly issued an ...
This State Department cable is to US Missions/Embassies informing them that they should inform the governments where they are located about the transfer of that government's citizens/nationals to Guantanamo, and to share the information ...
Nov. 23, 2004
Cable
Pierre-Richard Prosper
This State Department memo provides breakdown by nationality of 27 Bagram detainees; states that “Bagram is a temporary ‘collection center’ where some detainees stop over en route to their permanent location.  The conditions at Bagram are ...
Nov. 23, 2004
Non-legal Memo
Gregory M. Suchan
Gregory M. Suchan, Richard Lee Armitage
State Department cable with talking points concerning non-Afghani detainees picked-up on the battlefield of Afghanistan. The cable describes how the US intends to treat the legal status and prosecution of the detainees and appears to give ...
This State Department cable is a report on detainees as well as an assessment of the ground situation in Afghanistan. The cable focuses on a description of the Qandahar airport holding facility holding the Cuba-bound al-Qaida and Taliban ...
State Department Inter-Agency document Cover letter, no attachment; no content.
Nov. 23, 2004
Non-legal Memo
Colin L. Powell, Condoleeza Rice
This is a State Department cable containing an Action Message that states the US Government is gathering information on the identities and nationalities of detainees found in the conflict zone of Afghanistan, but is not sharing that information ...
This email contains a forwarded email from Linda Watt, Foreign Policy Advisor, SOUTHCOM, about the construction of the detainee facilities at Guantanamo. It states how many detainees will be housed there and the expectation of the resumption of ...
This State Department Cable is entitled "Subject: May 1 Transfer of Detainees to Guantanamo". There is no other discernible information or context.
State Department memo on how to address questions from the media on how the Guantanamo detainees are being treated. The memo poses potential questions and answers and states that the answers should be that the detainees are being: treated ...