Statistics of American Torture

The Statistics of American Torture

Main data provided by the American Civil Liberties Union

This operating cost comes at the American taxpayer's expense. This money could have been significantly beneficial to Americans were it spent on making lives better, instead of devising torture techniques like those described by Abu Zubaydah, with the help of his lawyer.

The rest see no form of jury, such as British citizens Shafiq Rasul & Asif Iqbal, who described their torture as documented in the Human Rights Watch briefing, "Guantanamo: Detainee Accounts."

780

$445M

1%

Of those 780, 21 children have been kidnapped and taken to this base. 30 prisoners remain there, as of December 2023, according to the New York Times.

is the annual cost to operate Guantanamo, according to Human Rights First's data.

of those in the torturer's custody have ever seen any form of trial.

people have been imprisoned and tortured in Guantanamo Bay.

Number of prisoners in Guantanamo released under each admin.

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70%

2001-09

2009-17

2017-21

2021-25

~532 prisoners released

~197 prisoners released

1 prisoner released

10 prisoners released (NPR)

"Short Shackling"

Rasul and Iqbal's testimony, as reported by Human Rights Watch

"Our interrogations in Guantanamo…were conducted with us chained to the floor for hours on end in circumstances so prolonged that it was practice to have plastic chairs… that could be easily hosed off because prisoners would be forced to urinate during the course of them and were not allowed to go to the toilet. One practice…was ‘short shackling’ where we were forced to squat without a chair with our hands chained between our legs and chained to the floor. If we fell over, the chains would cut into our hands. We would be left in this position for hours before an interrogation, during the interrogations (which could last as long as twelve hours), and sometimes for hours while the interrogators left the room. The air conditioning was turned up so high that within minutes we would be freezing. There was strobe lighting and loud music played that was itself a form of torture. Sometimes dogs were brought in to frighten us … Sometimes detainees would be taken to the interrogation room day after day and kept short-shackled without interrogation ever happening, sometimes for weeks on end." Picture credit: Denbeaux, Mark and Ghannam, Jess and Zubaydah, Abu, American Torturers: FBI and CIA Abuses at Dark Sites and Guantanamo (May 9, 2023). Seton Hall Law School Legal Studies Research Forthcoming,

"Body Cavity Search or Simulated Rape"

"In the drawing below, Mr. Abu Zubaydah depicts the anal cavity searches that torturers conducted virtually every time the prisoners were moved in between cells, vehicles, or prisons. These searches involved forcible anal probing with foreign objects of various sizes. The tormentors would laugh at the detainee during this process, in what Mr. Abu Zubaydah believes was an intentional act of calculated humiliation. Abu Zubaydah explains that both the FBI and CIA subjected him to these searches."

Source: Denbeaux, Mark and Ghannam, Jess and Zubaydah, Abu, American Torturers: FBI and CIA Abuses at Dark Sites and Guantanamo (May 9, 2023). Seton Hall Law School Legal Studies Research Forthcoming