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 (86)

This document is a response to an inquiry to cases of detainee abuse at Guantanamo. There are eleven (11) cases of substantiated misconduct, the incidents are not listed in chronological order.
July 22, 2005
Non-legal Memo
Other, General, Sexual, Forced physical training, Other, Use of water, Physical assault, Other Humiliation
This report by a DAIG Team interviewed 24 individuals and conducted 4 sensing sessions consisting of 23 Soldiers. All Soldiers interviewed and sensed were given surveys to assess factors associated with combat stress. The inspection took place ...
US Army soldier was asked forty-six questions regarding soldier training, soldier morale and the treatment of detainees. When answering the question about how to handle different categories of detainees, Official wrote that he "was not educated ...
July 15, 2005
Interview (Questionnaire)
Physical assault, General, Sleep deprivation, Other
Memo informs the reader that the Office of the Inspector General learned of a video portraying images of soldiers engaged in offensive behavior. The video allegedly portrays soldiers with the 1st Battalion 124 Infantry mistreating enemy ...
July 15, 2005
Non-legal Memo
Physical assault, General, Other

General Bantz J. Craddock, Commander United States Southern Command, ordered an AR 15-6 investigation into alleged instances of abuse at Guantanamo. He appointed Brigadier General John T. Furlow and Lieutenant General Randall M. Schmidt to ...

This is the Court Martial record of Specialist Timothy F. Canjar. It includes the charges against Spc. Canjar and his plea(s) as well as. Spc. Canjar was charged with: 1) dereliction of duty; 2) maltreatment of detainees (4 counts); 3) intent to ...
Article 15 Proceeding against a soldier who used pepper spray on a detainee after the detainee threw a liquid of unknown substance from his cell on the soldiers. The Soldier states that the detainee threw a cup of liquid once, and then was ...
June 24, 2005
UCMJ (Article 15)
Physical assault, Other
Army AR 15-6 Investigation in to the shooting of an un-armed Iraqi civilian at the Baqubah Airfield in Iraq. The Inquiry found that the soldier involved acted through "simple negligence" when handling a loaded pistol that accidently discharged ...
Apr. 18, 2005
Non-legal Memo, Investigative File (AR 15-6), Interview (Statement)
Raymond T. Odierno
Physical assault, Other
20 year old male detainee referred by CID. Reports he was slapped in the face by coalition forces. Reports after he was slapped, he fell into barbed wire and cut the tip fo his left ring finder. Also has a twisted ankle from running. Received ...
Apr. 18, 2005
Medical (Physical (non-death))
Physical assault, Face slap or insult slap, Other
Medical records of Iraqi male detainees who were injured during a prison riot in Abu Ghraib prison. A group of prisoners became unruly and guards used lethal force to subdue the crowd. The circumstances surrounding the incident were ...
Apr. 18, 2005
Medical (Physical (non-death))
Physical assault, Other