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
June 25, 2004 | CID | ACLU-RDI 648
Navy Criminal Investigative Service Officer asks about two brothers who were held in Iraq stating that when he saw them they looked "pretty shaken up (shivering from cold and laying on concrete all night). It appeared they had gone through a few ...
May 15, 2006
Email
General, Temperature, Physical assault, Environmental manipulation
Aug. 30, 2004 | DOD | ACLU-RDI 1835
Emails discuss a detainee's allegation that he was butt stroked in the face by a Soldier after being captured, while blindfolded and flexcuffed.
Dec. 21, 2005
Email
Physical assault, General, Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling
May 07, 2004 | DOD | ACLU-RDI 1837
Original email describes a visit from [redacted], a committee member of an Islamic human rights organization. The email also references a conversation between the author and [redacted] discussing alleged abuse cases that took place at Abu Ghraib.
Dec. 21, 2005
Email
Geoffrey D. Miller, Ricardo Sanchez
Use of water, Other, Physical assault, General, Sleep deprivation, Environmental manipulation, Light or sound, Hooding/Goggling, Nudity, Other
June 28, 2004 | CID | OJAG | ACLU-RDI 176
Email with an executive summary of investigations into a recordable compact disc containing images of suspected detainee abuse in in Afghanistan between January 11 and January 19, 2004. The images on the CD depicted U.S. soldiers holding weapons ...
Apr. 05, 2005
Investigative File (CID), Email
Physical assault, Threat, Assault/death, Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling
Aug. 31, 2004 | DOA | OJAG | ACLU-RDI 467

An email between members of the Staff Judge Advocate, forwarding a Washington Post article titled "Documents Helped Sow Abuse, Army Report Finds," from August 30, 2004.

Mar. 23, 2005
Email
Ricardo Sanchez, Paul J. Kern, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Alberto Mora, Geoffrey D. Miller, George W. Bush, John P. Abizaid, George R. Fay, Thomas Pappas
Stress positions, Use of phobias, Sleep deprivation, Isolation, Environmental manipulation, Light or sound, Nudity, Other Humiliation, Religious