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 (54)

Statement of Sergeant First Class who served as an interrogator. Describes interrogations, and states that only specific interrogators conduct interrogations. Continues, "Our command has authorization to detain people longer than 72 ...

Sworn statement discussing interrogation procedures and techniques. States, "We used 'Mutt and Jeff' with one of them being assertive, but probably not more than 20% of the time." Continues, "Ninety-nine percent of the time if there was an injury ...
June 30, 2006
Interview (Statement)
SERE, Physical assault, Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling
Sworn statement of an Operations Sergeant who discusses interrogation practices. Refers to a detainee, "our number one target," who was captured by Iraqi police, who "beat [redacted] with the pistol to the point where his head was split open in a ...
June 30, 2006
Interview (Statement)
Physical assault, General, Assault/death, Light or sound, Hooding/Goggling, Nudity, Threat, Environmental manipulation
Statement of detainee captured by Special Forces and taken to a place that he believed belonged to the CIA. States that he was held in a box "one meter long and one meter high," given no food for three days, and prevented from sleeping by "loud ...
Sworn statement by a Iraqi national who became a detainee at Abu Ghraib with member of his family. He claims that his brother was with the Saddam regime and when he went to visit his sister in Iraq he was taken in to custody as a detainee and ...
An Army questionnaire, including forty-one questions, given to a Captain regarding soldier training, soldier morale and the treatment of detainees. The handwritten responses are mostly illegible or redacted. The Captain responded that one of ...
Sept. 20, 2005
Interview (Questionnaire)
Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling
Questionnaire asked the First Sergeant forty-one questions regarding soldier training, soldier morale and the treatment of detainees. First Sergeant responded that in processing detainees, all males are removed from their homes, segregated, ...
July 15, 2005
Interview (Questionnaire)
Physical assault, General, Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling
Interview of a detainee at Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay. The detainee stated he was at the Kandahar airport for 2-3 months before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay. Stated he was treated harshly by the U.S. in Peshawar and Kandahar. Said he was ...
May 18, 2005
Non-legal Memo, Interview (Summaries/Notes)
Physical assault, General, Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling
Interview of a detainee at Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay. The detainee stated he was beaten by U.S. forces at an unknown location in Afghanistan. In one instance, he was taken via helicopter to a location where he was kicked in the stomach by ...
May 18, 2005
Non-legal Memo, Interview (Summaries/Notes)
Physical assault, General, Stress positions, Environmental manipulation, Temperature, Hooding/Goggling
Interview of detainee at Guantanamo. Detainee was shown a photo book wherein he identified Usama bin Laden, but says he never met him. Then he claimed that on a previous occasion two femal interviewers hooded him and had him beaten under questioning.
May 18, 2005
Interview (Summaries/Notes)
Physical assault, Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling