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 (172)

This document is a translated statement made by a detainee taken in to custody. Detainee describes abuse he received when taken in to custody at the Iraq/Saudi Arabia boarder. He said he was forced to exercise. He also stated to have been put in ...
Sept. 20, 2005
Investigative File (CID), Interview (Statement)
General, Stress positions, Forced physical training, Physical assault

This document is a sworn statement by a physician who examined a detainee who claimed to have been abused. The doctor concluded that the detainees injuries were consistent with his complaint of being abused.

A detainee claims to have been assaulted while in custody at Camp Al Baghdadi. The detainee had his injuries substantiated and the conclusion of the report was that the detainee was abused. The report found that the detainee was handcuffed and ...

Sept. 20, 2005
Investigative File (CID)
General, Stress positions, Dietary manipulation, Physical assault
CID report in to the death of a detainee in US custody. The detainee was brought to the hospital on December 3, 2003 with blunt trauma to the head with bleeding in the brain (determined by CT scan) and died January 4, 2004. The attending doctor ...
July 15, 2005
Investigative File (CID)
Physical assault
CID report in to the death of a detainee in US custody. The detainee was brought to the hospital on December 3, 2003 with blunt trauma to the head with bleeding in the brain (determined by CT scan) and died January 4, 2004. This document contains ...
July 15, 2005
Investigative File (CID)
Face slap or insult slap, General, Physical assault
Investigation into allegations of larceny, looting, failure to obey a general order, accessory after the fact and conspiracy. Case involves ten soldiers who allegedly stole $4,000 and 700,000 Iraqi dinars during a combat cordon and search of an ...
Fax of a sworn statement which describes soldiers having photographs of naked female prisoners and being instructed by superiors to delete all such photographs from their computers in case of investigation. related to CID investigation. ACLU RDI 64.
May 16, 2005
Investigative File (CID), Interview (Statement)
Nudity, Other Humiliation, Sexual
Email with an executive summary of a CID investigation into validity of statements by a soldier claiming to have been involved in the abuse and murder of Iraqi detainees on January 18, 2004, while he worked in the Intensive Care Ward, Camp ...
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
Email containing an executive summary of CID investigation into allegations that a soldier threatened a detainee with a gun, fired the gun on the ground next to the detainee, and "butt-stroked" the detainee during a "knock-and-search" operation ...
Apr. 05, 2005
Investigative File (CID), Email
Physical assault, General, Threat, Assault/death