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 (267)

RelevanceDateRelease Date
State Department cable summarizes discussion at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe meeting on Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM) dedicated to rule-of-law issues. The US took "substantial criticism" for its ...
Dec. 23, 2004
Cable
Colin L. Powell
Colin L. Powell
State Department cable to Washington describing a letter left off at the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey by a human rights group written to President Bush with accusations of human rights violations and actions in contradiction to the Geneva ...
Dec. 23, 2004
Cable
George W. Bush, Colin L. Powell
State Department cable providing talking points and summarizes discussion from September 18, 2003 Human Rights and Terrorism Meeting at The Hague. The summary includes a "surprising defense of the U.S. policies in the war against terror noting ...
Dec. 23, 2004
Cable
Colin L. Powell
Colin L. Powell
State Department talking points to present at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe meeting in Vienna. The points being made cover many world issues such as human trafficking and combating anti-Semitism and greater cooperation ...
Dec. 23, 2004
Cable
Colin L. Powell
Colin L. Powell
State Department talking points to present to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe concerning human rights and combatting terrorism in The Hague. The presentation focused on military commissions and Taliban and Al-Qaeda ...
Dec. 23, 2004
Cable
Colin L. Powell
Colin L. Powell
State Department cable with a letter from Ambassador Pierre-Richard Prosper on behalf of Sec. Powell. The letter states that the men are being held in accordance with the law of war for illegal enemy combatants, but that they are being treated ...
Dec. 23, 2004
Cable
Colin L. Powell
George W. Bush, Colin L. Powell, Pierre-Richard Prosper
State Department cable providing a letter to be delivered to attorneys representing family members of certain persons being held at Guantanamo as Enemy Combatants. The letter states that the U.S. is not providing specific information on ...
Dec. 23, 2004
Cable
Colin L. Powell
Colin L. Powell
State Department talking points on 1) Isreal/Palestinians: Roadmap Progress; 2) Iraq: World Bank loans for reconstruction; 3) Iraq: Appointment of governing council President, return of Iraqi refugees, Amnesty International report on internal ...
Dec. 23, 2004
Cable
Colin L. Powell
Colin L. Powell
State Department cable with talking points on responding to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention opinion concerning the detention of four (4) specific persons held at Guantanamo. The U.S. respectfully disagreed with the characterization of ...
Dec. 23, 2004
Cable
Colin L. Powell
Colin L. Powell
Khaled Ben Mustafa, Nizar Sassi, Mourad Benchellali, Ahmad Abd al Rahman Ahmad
State Department cable with talking points in response to statements and/or on the rules relating to military judicial commissions and the rule of law in the U.S. at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. It is pointed out that ...
Dec. 23, 2004
Cable
Colin L. Powell