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 (5)

RelevanceDateRelease Date
Sept. 16, 2005 | CID | ACLU-RDI 2250
Criminal Investigation Command (CID) report into allegations of assault, cruelty and maltreatment of a detainee by guards at Abu Ghraib. Among the detainee's allegations, he stated that a US Army Sergeant hung him by his arms from the bars of a ...
Feb. 15, 2006
Investigative File (CID), Photograph
Donald J. Ryder, Thom Jones
Use of water, Other, Physical assault, General, Stress positions, Isolation, Environmental manipulation, Light or sound, Hooding/Goggling, Nudity, Other Humiliation, Sexual, Religious, Manipulation of interrogator’s identity, Other
Oct. 23, 2004 | CID | ACLU-RDI 1564

Criminal Investigation Command (CID) report pertaining to the abuse of a detainee at an unknown location. The detainee alleged that he was forced to walk on hot pavement, punched and kicked all over his body, had his ribcage fractured, and was ...

Sept. 20, 2005
Investigative File (CID)
Ricardo Sanchez, Pamela Andrews
Physical assault, General, Stress positions, Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling, Other
Oct. 02, 2003 | CID | ACLU-RDI 15
Two NCOs and two enlisted men from B Company, 1/36th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Division severely assaulted several detained youths while the detainees' heads were covered with sandbags and their hands restrained with flexi-cuffs. The ...
Dec. 30, 2004
Investigative File (CID)
Physical assault, Face slap or insult slap, General, Cramped confinement, Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling, Other Humiliation, Forced grooming, Other
Dec. 19, 2003 | CID | ACLU-RDI 20

On November 14, 2003, a soldier provided a sworn statement saying that while he was deployed to Iraq, he "saw what I think were war crimes.... In my mind, my chain of command did nothing to stop these war crimes, and allowed them to ...

Dec. 30, 2004
Investigative File (CID), Photograph
Physical assault, General, Stress positions, Dietary manipulation, Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling, Other
July 28, 2004 | CID | ACLU-RDI 28

An investigation into a detainee's allegation that he was "tortured" at a U.S. facility in Mosul in March 2004. Detainee indicated that after being arrested but before arriving at the facility, his captors -- American men in civilian ...

Dec. 30, 2004
Investigative File (CID)
Jacqueline J. Scott, John Peterson
Use of water, Other, Physical assault, General, Threat, Family/others, Environmental manipulation, Temperature, Hooding/Goggling, Nudity, Other