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 (570)

A soldier was found guilty of using excessive force during interrogation by assaulting detainee with a police riot baton on his feet. Punishment included oral admonition and restriction to set locations (dining hall, duty, company area, ...

Apr. 18, 2005
Investigative File
Physical assault, General

Record data of all detainees who were treated in U.S. Army medical treatment facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq between December, 2001 and September, 2004.

Military Police Investigative Report in to allegations of a soldier in Afghanistan pointing a gun at the head of a restrained detainee. The soldier offered a statement in which he states 1) the gun was a BB gun and not his service weapon; and 2) ...
Apr. 05, 2005
Investigative File (CID)
Threat, Assault/death, Stress positions
Military police report relating to a CID investigation into allegations reported in a May 2004 Playboy article entitled "Death and Dishonor". Soldiers quoted in the article alleged that soldiers assigned to the 1/15th Infantry Battalion had, ...
Apr. 05, 2005
Investigative File (CID)
Physical assault, Sexual, General
Email with an executive summary of investigation into the death of an Iraqi enemy prisoner of war. Obeed Hethere Radad was confinded in an isolation cell with his hands secured. A guard claimed he thought Radad was trying to escape and shot him ...
Apr. 05, 2005
Investigative File (CID), Email
Obeed Hethere Radad
Physical assault
Email with an executive summary of CID investigation into a Lieutenant Colonel's admission of issuing a death threat and firing his pistol next to the head of a detainee (an uncooperative Iraqi police officer suspected of being part of a plot to ...
Apr. 05, 2005
Investigative File (CID), Email
Bruce E. Davis
Physical assault, Threat, Assault/death
Email containing an executive summary of CID investigation into allegations that a soldier threatened a detainee with a gun, fired the gun on the ground next to the detainee, and "butt-stroked" the detainee during a "knock-and-search" operation ...
Apr. 05, 2005
Investigative File (CID), Email
Physical assault, General, Threat, Assault/death
Email with an executive summary of an investigation into allegations in a May 2004 Playboy article entitled "Death and Dishonor". Soldiers quoted in the article alleged that soldiers assigned to the 1/15th Infantry Battalion had, among other ...
Apr. 05, 2005
Investigative File (CID), Email
Physical assault, Sexual, General
Executive summary of investigation into the cause of death of Abbas Alwan Fadil, a detainee at Abu Ghraib prison, Iraq. Autopsy of the detainee was pending at the time of the summary. The preliminary examination "revealed no signs of trauma or ...
Apr. 05, 2005
Investigative File (CID)
Abbas Alwan Fadil
Email with an executive summary of a CID investigation into validity of statements by a soldier claiming to have been involved in the abuse and murder of Iraqi detainees on January 18, 2004, while he worked in the Intensive Care Ward, Camp ...