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)

Army documents, handwritten notes in Arabic and U.S. Army claim forms relating to claim of wrongful shooting and detention of an Iraqi citizen. This also contains a note to the guards at Abu Ghraib to release a wrongfully detained Iraqi citizen ...

An investigation into allegations that Iraqi detainees were punched in the head and stomach in the back of a U.S. Army vehicle by numerous soldiers after being taken from their house in the middle of the night. The investigation was initiated ...

Jan. 31, 2005
Investigative File (CID)
Jacqueline J. Scott, John Peterson
Physical assault, General

An investigation finding probable cause to believe that two U.S. soldiers committed the offense of assault when they punched and kicked a local detainee whom they picked up at a roadblock and transported to an Iraqi prison. A sergeant took ...

Jan. 31, 2005
Investigative File (CID)
Jacqueline J. Scott, Thom Jones
Physical assault, General, Other

Iraqi detainee alleged that he was taken from his cell to another location by plain-clothed Americans who beat him in the head and stomach, dislocated his arms, "stepped on the [his] nose" and broke it, and stuck a pistol in his ...

Jan. 31, 2005
Investigative File (CID)
Jacqueline J. Scott, Thom Jones
Physical assault, General, Threat, Assault/death

An investigation concluding that there was probable cause to believe a detainee, Riadh Mohammed Abd Al Razak, died naturally as result of Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease on June 10, 2004. Detainee Camp Chief who was interviewed stated ...

Jan. 31, 2005
Investigative File (CID)
Jacqueline J. Scott, John Peterson
Riadh Mohammed Abd Al Razak

An investigation into allegations by an Iraqi detinee that interrogators hand- and leg-cuffed him to the floor and pushed him over while blindfolded, causing severe pain and nerve bruising in his wrist. the investigation concluded that there ...

Jan. 31, 2005
Investigative File (CID)
Jacqueline J. Scott, John Peterson
Physical assault, General, Stress positions, Isolation, Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling

Investigation establishing that four enlisted men from 1/327th Infantry Regiment had committed burglary, aggravated assault, larceny, and other crimes in connection with the theft of 56,000 Iraqi Dinar from several Iraqi residences at night. ...

Dec. 30, 2004
Investigative File (CID)
Assault/death, Threat
Upon being processed in to Abu Ghraib prison, a 48 year-old Iraqi male detainee complained to the Prisoner Interview/Interrogation Team (PIT), that U.S. forces had punched him in the stomach while transporting him to the prison. The medical ...
Dec. 30, 2004
Investigative File (CID)
Jacqueline J. Scott
Physical assault, General

Detainee alleged that U.S. forces captured him and took him to Dhyla Al Mokhadia Base, an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps location, where he was deprived of food and water for three days with his hands tied and eyes blindfolded.  He alleged ...

Dec. 30, 2004
Investigative File (CID)
John Peterson, Jacqueline J. Scott
Physical assault, General, Dietary manipulation, Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling
A Lieutenant Colonel admitted to issuing a death threat and firing his pistol next to the head of a detainee suspected of being part of a plot to assassinate U.S. troops, including the Lt. Col. This was supposedly done during an interrogation. ...
Dec. 30, 2004
Investigative File (CID), Photograph
Physical assault, General, Threat, Assault/death