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 (931)

This memorandum from Assistant Attorney General John Bybee to John Rizzo provides the Office of the Assistant Attorney General's view on whether certain proposed conduct during the interrogation of al Qaeda Operative Abu Zubaydah would violate ...
This memorandum from Steven Bradbury to John Rizzo analyzes whether certain enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA in the interrogation of high value al Qaeda detainees would violate US law under Article 16. The memorandum concludes ...
This letter from Daniel Levin to John Rizzo is the Office of Legal Counsel's response to the proposed use of twelve interrogation techniques during the interrogation of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and whether or not these techniques would violate U.S. ...
This document is a letter from Daniel Levin to John Rizzo stating that the use of twelve interrogation techniques in the interrogation of Sharif al-Masri will not violate the U.S. constitution, statute, or other treaty obligation. Levin says ...
This memorandum from Steven Bradbury to John Rizzo examines whether certain interrogation techniques can be used in the interrogation of high value al-Qaeda detainees. The memorandum concludes that none of these specific techniques, considered ...

This report discusses an investigation into the alleged abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib Detention Facility. The investigation was ordered initially by LTG Ricardo S. Sanchez, Commander, Combined Joint Task Force Seven (CJTF-7). LTG Sanchez ...

An investigation into an allegation that, on December 31, 2003, a soldier threatened a detainee with a gun, fired the gun on the ground next to the detainee, and "butt-stroked" the detainee. The investigation "established ...

Oct. 15, 2004
Investigative File (CID)
Physical assault, General, Threat, Assault/death
CID report and accompanying documents related to an investigation into the mistreatment of a female Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib prison on October 7, 2003. The female prisoner stated that she was taken out of her cell and brought to an empty cell ...
Oct. 15, 2004
Investigative File (CID)
Physical assault, Sexual, General, Nudity, Other Humiliation, Sexual
CID report and accompanying documents related to an investigation of abuse. The investigation followed a report by a U.S. Army Medic at Bagram Detention Facility that Persons Under Control (PUC) numbers 327, 328 and 330 may have been previously ...
Oct. 15, 2004
Investigative File (CID)
Physical assault
CID Report and accompanying documents related to an investigation into allegation of abuse of a detainee in Peshawar, Pakistan and Kandahar, Afghanistan. The detainee claimed that he was beaten on his hands, feet, and chest while detained. The ...
Oct. 15, 2004
Investigative File (CID)
Physical assault