CITF was initially activated in February 2002 under a mandate from the Secretary of Defense addressed to the Secretary of the Army. The Secretary of the Army formally tasked the US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID), and CID activated the Criminal Investigation Task Force solely for the purpose of conducting criminal investigations against suspected terrorists detained by US forces. Under the Secretary of Defense directive, the Army was directed to maximize the capabilities of all the Services, and therefore coordinated with the US Air Force and US Navy to assist. The CITF included members from four of five of the branches of the U.S. armed forces; Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID), the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), the United States Marine Corps Criminal Investigation Division (USMC CID), and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI). Other personnel for the CITF came from military intelligence and support organizations. From time to time, liaison personnel and others from Federal Law Enforcement and other government agencies were attached to the CITF. An element from the CITF was initially deployed to Afghanistan with the goal of identifying captured terrorists, and to collect evidence for use in Military Commissions. Suspected terrorists were temporarily held at the Kandahar or Bagram Detention Facilities. Another element of the CITF was deployed to US Naval Base, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After the invasion of Iraq, CITF deployed yet another element to Iraq, initially to prepare for the possible transfer of detainees in Iraq to Guantanamo. Later, CITF began to collect evidence for use in the Central Criminal Court of Iraq. CITF also maintained its role in military operations by assisting Special Operations Command (SOCOM) with forensic evidence collection. In military, and law enforcement agencies, "Task Forces" are temporary organizations created to conduct a specialized mission or task. Members of "Joint Task Forces" are drawn from many different units. However, the CITF was never formally given the designation of a "Joint Task Force."
The CITF has operated worldwide and by 2005 had conducted over 1500 investigations and 10,000 interviews, and collected large amounts of evidence both in places where persons were captured and elsewhere. The results of CITF investigations has been used in military commissions (tribunals) at the Guantánamo Bay detainment camp and other legal proceedings in Afghanistan and Iraq.. The CITF has provided evidence to Iraqi Courts to prosecute insurgents and foreign fighters captured in Iraq for crimes there, and has assisted other US and international law enforcement agencies.
As a result of widespread criticism of reported human rights abuses at Guantanamo and in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, most notably the Iraq prison abuse scandals, including torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Bagram, a great deal of media and public attention was given to the methods used by the CITF and other U.S. military and civilian agencies in interrogations and other activities.
Senior law enforcement agents with the CITF told NBC News in 2006 that they began to complain to Department of Defense officials in 2002 that the interrogation tactics used by a separate team of intelligence investigators were unproductive, not likely to produce reliable information, and probably illegal. Unable to achieve a satisfactory response from the U.S. Army commanders in charge of the detainee camp, they took their concerns to both the Army Criminal Investigation Command under GeneralDonald Ryder, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service under David Brant. Brant alerted Alberto J. Mora, the general counsel for the Navy. The first commander of the CITF was Colonel (now retired) Brittain Mallow, and his Deputy was Special Agent Mark Fallon. Their names have been in several articles and also mentioned during Congressional testimony.
Some copies of government documents detailing CITF policies and practices have become publicly available through after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act request and subsequently a lawsuit. Archived 2009-06-05 at the Wayback Machine There have been numerous discussions in congress and in the press and online regarding the differences between the CITF and other law enforcement methods, and those of the intelligence organizations involved with detainees. The CITF staff by all reports appear to have used only non-coercive, non-torturous methods in questioning detainees.
During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including physical abuse, sexual humiliation, both physical and psychological torture, rape, as well the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi and the desecration of his body. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse by CBS News in April 2004. The incidents caused shock and outrage, receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally.
Geoffrey D. Miller is a retired United States Army major general who commanded the US detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Iraq. Detention facilities in Iraq under his command included Abu Ghraib prison, Camp Cropper, and Camp Bucca. He is noted for having trained soldiers in using torture, or "enhanced interrogation techniques" in US euphemism, and for carrying out the "First Special Interrogation Plan," signed by the Secretary of Defense, against a Guantanamo detainee.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi is a Mauritanian citizen who was detained at Guantánamo Bay detention camp without charge from 2002 until his release on October 17, 2016.
Moazzam Begg is a British Pakistani who was held in extrajudicial detention by the US government in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility and the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, in Cuba, for nearly three years. Seized by Pakistani intelligence at his home in Pakistan in February 2002, he was transferred to the custody of US Army officers, who held him in the detention centre at Bagram, Afghanistan, before transferring him to Guantanamo Bay, where he was held until January 2005.
The 2005 Quran desecration controversy began when Newsweek's April 30, 2005, issue contained a report asserting that United States prison guards or interrogators had deliberately damaged a copy of the Quran. A week later, The New Yorker reported the words of Pakistani politician Imran Khan: "This is what the U.S. is doing—desecrating the Quran." This incident caused upset in parts of the Muslim world.
In 2005, The New York Times obtained a 2,000-page United States Army investigatory report concerning the homicides of two unarmed civilian Afghan prisoners by U.S. military personnel in December 2002 at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Bagram, Afghanistan and general treatment of prisoners. The two prisoners, Habibullah and Dilawar, were repeatedly chained to the ceiling and beaten, resulting in their deaths. Military coroners ruled that both the prisoners' deaths were homicides. Autopsies revealed severe trauma to both prisoners' legs, describing the trauma as comparable to being run over by a bus. Seven soldiers were charged in 2005.
Dilawar, also known as Dilawar of Yakubi, was an Afghan farmer and taxi driver who was tortured to death by US Army soldiers at the Bagram Collection Point, a US military detention center in Afghanistan.
United States Army Captain Carolyn Wood is a military intelligence officer who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. She was implicated by the Fay Report to have "failed" in several aspects of her command regarding her oversight of interrogators at Abu Ghraib. She was alleged by Amnesty International to be centrally involved in the 2003 Abu Ghraib and 2002 Bagram prisoner abuse cases. Wood is featured in the 2008 Academy award-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side.
Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States, in the context of the early twenty-first century War on Terrorism, refers to foreign nationals the United States detains outside of the legal process required within United States legal jurisdiction. In this context, the U.S. government is maintaining torture centers, called black sites, operated by both known and secret intelligence agencies. Such black sites were later confirmed by reports from journalists, investigations, and from men who had been imprisoned and tortured there, and later released after being tortured until the CIA was comfortable they had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to hide.
Donald Ryder is a retired major general of the United States Army who served as United States Army Provost Marshal General from 2003 to 2006.
Alberto José Mora is a former General Counsel of the Navy. He led an effort within the Defense Department to oppose the legal theories of John Yoo and to try to end the use of torture at Guantanamo Bay.
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison within the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Gitmo, on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. As of April 2023, of the 779 people detained there since January 2002 when the military prison first opened after the September 11 attacks, 740 had been transferred elsewhere, 30 remained there, and 9 had died while in custody.
Obaidullah is a citizen of Afghanistan who was one of the last remaining Afghan detainees held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camp, in Cuba. He was captured as an Enemy combatant on July 20, 2002, transferred to Guantanamo on October 28, 2002, and transferred to the United Arab Emirates on August 15, 2016. Obaidullah's Guantanamo Internment Serial Number is 762. American intelligence analysts estimate that Obaidullah was born in 1980 in Khowst, Afghanistan.
Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al-Darbi is a citizen of Saudi Arabia who was held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba from August 2002 to May 2018; in May 2018, he was transferred to Saudi Arabia's custody. He was the only detainee held at Guantanamo released during President Donald Trump's administration.
"Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" was a program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at remote sites around the world—including Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bucharest—authorized by officials of the George W. Bush administration. Methods used included beating, binding in contorted stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep disruption, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food, drink, and medical care for wounds, as well as waterboarding, walling, sexual humiliation, rape, sexual assault, subjection to extreme heat or extreme cold, and confinement in small coffin-like boxes. A Guantanamo inmate's drawings of some of these tortures, to which he himself was subjected, were published in The New York Times. Some of these techniques fall under the category known as "white room torture". Several detainees endured medically unnecessary "rectal rehydration", "rectal fluid resuscitation", and "rectal feeding". In addition to brutalizing detainees, there were threats to their families such as threats to harm children, and threats to sexually abuse or to cut the throat of detainees' mothers.
The Parwan Detention Facility is Afghanistan's main military prison. Situated next to the Bagram Air Base in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, the prison was built by the U.S. during the George W. Bush administration. The Parwan Detention Facility, which housed foreign and local combatants, was maintained by the Afghan National Army.
Mohamed Mazouz is a citizen of Morocco who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 294. Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts report he was born on December 31, 1973, in Casablanca, Morocco. He was designated as a terrorist entity by the Moroccan Ministry of Justice in 2023, and an international arrest warrant has been issued for his arrest for alleged terrorist acts.
Joshua R. Claus is a former member of the United States Army, whose unit was present at both Iraq's Abu Ghraib and at the Bagram Theater Detention Facility in Afghanistan, and was the first interrogator of Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr. In 2005, he was found guilty of maltreatment and assault against an Afghanistan detainee who later died.
A number of incidents stemming from the September 11 attacks have raised questions about legality.
Michael E. Dunlavey is a former major general in the United States Army. Following his retirement from the Army he was elected a State Judge in Erie Pennsylvania.
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