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 (43)

Report of investigation into the abuse and mock execution of Iraqi civilians by a U.S. soldier on two separate occasions. Investigation established that the soldier committed the offenses of assault, conspiracy, release of a detainee without ...
Nov. 08, 2004
Investigative File (CID), Photograph
Jacqueline J. Scott
Threat, Assault/death
Investigation into an incident of two soldiers assaulting an Iraqi civilian who had been taken into custody of the US Army near the Iraq Museum of Military History, Baghdad, Iraq. The investigation established probable cause to believe that the ...
Nov. 08, 2004
Investigative File (CID), Photograph
John Peterson, Jacqueline J. Scott
Physical assault, Threat, Assault/death
This report, issued by John Helgerson, examines whether CIA interrogators used unauthorized interrogation techniques on high value detainees, including Abd al-Rahman Al-Nashiri.
Non-legal Memo, Oversight Report, Investigative File
John Helgerson
John Helgerson, James Pavitt
Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri
EIT, Use of water, Waterboarding, Physical assault, Threat, Sleep deprivation