A Conversation with Survivors of the CIA’s Post-9/11 Torture Program

On At Liberty, we reflect on what justice for victims and survivors would look like, and how to ensure the government never uses these inhumane tactics again.

ACLU

September 10, 2021

On At Liberty, we reflect on what justice for victims and survivors would look like, and how to ensure the government never uses these inhumane tactics again.

In 2015, the ACLU sued psychologists James Elmer Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen, whom the CIA enlisted to design, implement, and oversee its post-9/11 torture program. Our clients were Suleiman Abdullah Salim and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, who survived the torture, and the family of the late Gul Rahman, who was kidnapped, experimented on, and tortured to death in CIA custody.

While courts shut down every previous lawsuit involving CIA torture on secrecy and immunity grounds, our clients repeatedly prevailed against Mitchell and Jessen’s attempts to have the case dismissed. The lawsuit ultimately resulted in a historic settlement in 2017, but the traumas that the CIA inflicted on our clients and the program’s many other victims and survivors cannot be reversed.

“These doctors … dedicated their work not to serve prisoners or to alleviate their ordeal, but instead, dedicated their knowledge to increasing the pain of the sick and to increasing the mental distress of the sick and … to intensify their torture.”

– Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, torture survivor

Twenty years after 9/11, we look back on this seminal case with Mohamed, Suleiman, and Obaid Ullah (Gul Rahman’s nephew), and ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Steven Watt in this week’s episode of At Liberty. Listen to the podcast for the full discussion about what the litigation achieved, what the U.S. still needs to do to make amends to victims and survivors, and how to prevent the government from using torture in the future.

Survivors of the CIA Torture Program Almost 20 Years Later

As we approach the 20-year mark since September 11th, we are following up with the clients and the attorney of one seminal ACLU lawsuit on the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program, a program that ended in 2010 but that continues to haunt its survivors ...