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 (97)

Report on an AR 15-6 inquiry into treatment of a detainee captured by a SEAL team in January 2004. This is the conclusions and findings of the investigator. Several soldiers state that SEALs performed a battlefield interrogation, during which ...

June 30, 2006
UCMJ (Article 15)
Physical assault, General, Threat, Assault/death, Stress positions, Cramped confinement, Other Humiliation
This FBI memo condenses an interview conducted with a detainee at Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay. The detainee related his experience when captured in Afghanistan, including seeing an American (supposedly John Walker Lindh) while in detention. He ...
Dec. 15, 2004
Interview (Summaries/Notes)
Assault/death, Cramped confinement, Threat
This is a Court-Martial of Staff Sergeant Peasgood who was accused of and pleaded guilty to mistreating, shocking and hitting three (3) Iraqi detainees with an M34 blasting device and stripped them of their clothing. His punishment is a ...
Feb. 15, 2006
Photograph, Interview (Statement), UCMJ (Court-Martial)
General, Use of electricity, Cramped confinement, Physical assault
Two NCOs and two enlisted men from B Company, 1/36th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Division severely assaulted several detained youths while the detainees' heads were covered with sandbags and their hands restrained with flexi-cuffs. The ...
This investigative report was generated by the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF) Report of Investigative Activity and the interview of the detainee at Camp Delta was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Navy Naval ...
Dec. 21, 2005
Investigative File, Interview (Summaries/Notes)
Physical assault, General, Cramped confinement

A list of bullet points discussing legal principles applicable to the CIA's detention and interrogation of detainees, including the use of the "enhanced interrogation techniques."  Many of the principles listed appear in the ...

A list of bullet points discussing legal principles applicable to the CIA's detention and interrogation of detainees, including the use of the "enhanced interrogation techniques." Many of the principles listed appear in the OLC's interrogation ...

A letter from Scott Muller, general counsel of the CIA, to John Yoo, OLC, enclosing a list of legal principles applicable to the CIA's detention and interrogation of detainees, including the use of the "enhanced interrogation ...

Lengthy, but almost entirely redacted, document that apparently discusses the CIA’s detention and interrogation program for “high value targets.” The document provides some detail regarding the “standard” and ...

This cable includes the text of the January 28, 2003 DCI approved "Guidelines on Interrogations Conducted Pursuant to the Presidential Memorandum of Notification of 17 September 2001". The cable also asks that all personnel involved in ...