Lawsuit filed against architects of CIA interrogation program

Two former CIA prisoners and the family of a third man who died in CIA custody are suing two psychologists who were crucial to constructing the brutal interrogation tactics that many people consider torture.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit in Spokane, Wash., on Tuesday on behalf of the three men, who were held for years and subjected to harsh treatment at the hands of U.S. officials. They were never charged or accused of any crime.

The suit accuses the two CIA-contracted psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, of committing war crimes, as well as nonconsensual human experimentation and torture.

“Defendants designed, developed, and implemented a program intended to inflict physical pain and mental suffering on Plaintiffs,” the ACLU alleged in an 82-page complaint filed with the court. “Defendants also experimented on Plaintiffs without their consent by attempting to induce in them a state of ‘learned helplessness’ to break their wills by torturing and cruelly-treating them. 

“With Defendants’ support, the CIA sought and obtained authorization from U.S. government agencies and officials for use of torture and cruel methods, and, over time, for the program’s continuation and expansion.”

Mitchell and Jessen worked as contractors for the CIA and were paid $81 million to help run the agency’s rendition and interrogation program based on a theory that detainees would give up valuable information once they entered a state of “learned helplessness.” Detainees were taken to “black sites” and then subjected to brutal interrogation methods such as being confined to cramped coffin-like spaces and kept awake for days on end.

In an interview with Vice News last year, Mitchell acknowledged that he also participated in the waterboarding of some detainees.

“There were some abuses that occurred” at the black sites, Mitchell told the news outlet. However, he insisted that he and Jessen raised concerns about the use of “unauthorized techniques.”

The brutal methods were documented last year in a scathing Senate report that accused the CIA of misleading its overseers to pursue a torture program that was not effective at obtaining information from detainees. 

The ACLU suit was brought on behalf of Gul Rahman, Suleiman Abdullah Salim and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, who were all held captive by the CIA.

Rahman died in 2002 after being shackled to the wall of his cell wearing nothing but a sweatshirt. An autopsy later concluded that he likely died from hypothermia, partly from being forced to sit on the cold, bare concrete floor without pants.

Before that, he was forced to stay awake for 48 hours at a time, and also subjected to “auditory overload, total darkness, isolation, a cold shower and rough treatment,” according to the Senate report.

Salim, meanwhile, was abducted from Somalia and spent time in two CIA black site prisons in Afghanistan before being released more than five years later. According to the ACLU, he now lives in Zanzibar with his wife and daughter.

Ben Soud fled his native Libya in 1991, but was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and detained for two years in CIA custody. He was forced to remain naked for weeks at a time, subjected to loud blaring music and was driven “close to madness” by lack of sleep, he alleged in the new lawsuit.

He also saw Mitchell at three points during his captivity at one CIA black site, the complaint alleged, at least twice while he was doused with icy-cold water that brought his internal temperature dangerously low.

In 2005, he was sent to Libya, where he was imprisoned and tortured by the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. He was released in 2011 amid an uprising that overthrew Gaddafi.