On behalf of three former U.S. detainees, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the contractor psychologists who designed and oversaw the CIA interrogation program that used systemic torture on them at the agency's infamous black sites.
Psychologists James Mitchell and John "Bruce" Jessen are former CIA contractors who, between 2001 and 2010, were paid nearly $85 million for developing and overseeing the torture program on behalf of the CIA, reports The Intercept.
The federal lawsuit, filed in Spokane, Wash., accuses the two of commissioning "torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; non-consensual human experimentation; and war crimes, all of which violate well-established norms of customary international law," according to The Intercept.
The plaintiffs in the case, Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud and Gul Rahman, are only three of the 119 detainees who were tortured under programs designed by Mitchell and Jensen. Salim and Soud were never charged by the U.S. with a crime and have been freed, but they say they now suffer from physical and psychological impairments as a result of the treatment. Rahman froze to death in a CIA facility in Afghanistan, so the ACLU is suing on behalf of his family.
The suit alleges that the former prisoners were subjected to repeated simulated drownings, stuffed in small coffin-like boxes, exposed to extreme temperatures, stripped naked and beaten, starved and sleep deprived, and forced to listen to deafening music non-stop while left alone in the dark, according to The International Business Times.
The suit calls the torture program a "joint criminal enterprise" from which Mitchell and Jessen, who had no previous experience with interrogations, financially profited. The two previously worked as psychologists at the U.S. Air Force's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape school.
It's the first lawsuit to seek accountability in a U.S. court for the CIA's program since the Senate Intelligence Committee released its torture report in December 2014, according to The Huffington Post.
Steven Watt, the ACLU lawyer representing the former detainees, said the Senate's report is "really why our clients are able to pursue this case."
"It's the first post-Senate report effort on accountability in U.S. courts," Watt said, adding, "Impunity for torture sends the dangerous message the U.S. and foreign officials that there will be no consequences for future abuses," according to the Guardian.
"This lawsuit is different from past ones because public government documents now provide exhaustive details on the CIA torture program, and they identify the people who were tortured and how it happened," he said. "The government has long abused the 'state secrets' privilege to prevent accountability for torture, but at this stage, any claim that the torture of our clients is a state secret would be absurd."
The Senate report found no evidence that the torture techniques actually provided useful intelligence information but instead concluded the techniques used resulted in "faulty intelligence."
To date, no one involved in the program, which was authorized by multiple levels of government, has been charged with any wrongdoing. In 2009, President Obama granted absolute immunity to all officials involved in the program, and a 2012 Justice Department investigation concluded that no crime had been committed.
