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 (33)

This Sergeant was assigned to Abu Ghraib prison from May 22, 2003 to November 4, 2003. The Sergeant stated "MPs never used physical force, withheld food, humiliated or otherwise abused detainees as a control measure. Military Police (MP) were ...
Mar. 03, 2005
Interview (Statement)
Stress positions, Sleep deprivation, Dietary manipulation, Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling, Nudity
Interviewee made more than one trip to AG. First was a an interrogator assigned to AG to review interrogation database/report protocol. Second as a member of Tiger Team. Observed the following techniques, sleep deprivation, altering of meal ...
Interviewee arrived to AG around mid-October as the Day-shift Non-commissioned Officer in Charge. Stated that his/her job was to manage detainee sleep plans, and to make sure the detainees were showered, fed, and did not cause problems. ...

Detainee alleged that U.S. forces captured him and took him to Dhyla Al Mokhadia Base, an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps location, where he was deprived of food and water for three days with his hands tied and eyes blindfolded.  He alleged ...

Dec. 30, 2004
Investigative File (CID)
John Peterson, Jacqueline J. Scott
Physical assault, General, Dietary manipulation, Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling

On 1/18/04, a detainee gave a statement about abuse he had suffered at Abu Ghraib and also stated that he had witnessed a translator forcibly sodomizing a male juvenile detainee while a female U.S. soldier observed and took pictures. (This ...

Approximately 73-year-old Iraqi woman reported that she had been subjected to assault and sexual abuse, including being sodomized with a stick and touched in private areas; that she was forced to "swim" in water thrown on ...

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
CID Report of investigation into detainee's allegations of abuse while in U.S. custody at Mosul Airport, Iraq, over three day period. The detainee claimed to have sustained a bruise to his left shoulder and scratched during his capture. Once in ...
Investigations into numerous alleged abuses at Abu Ghraib Prison and Al-Ademeya Palace based on reports from CACI and Titan translation employees. Alleged abuses include the physical beatings and humiliation of various detainees, forced exercise ...

Email includes news articles about high level detainees, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah and the "harsh" interrogation methods the CIA employs. The email includes another article, which reports specific accounts of abuse.