# Gul Rahman

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Gul Rahman," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/gul-rahman/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*Prisoner who froze to death in a CIA cold cell at the Salt Pit black site in Afghanistan; the only death in the torture programme the agency acknowledges, and the third claim in the civil suit brought against James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. John Kiriakou says nobody has ever been brought to justice for it.*

- **Died:** In CIA custody at the [Salt Pit](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/salt-pit), Afghanistan
- **Cause:** Hypothermia, after the [cold cell](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cold-cell) technique
- **Technique status:** Never approved
- **Overseen by:** [Mitchell and Jessen](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mitchell-and-jessen), per Kiriakou
- **Litigation:** One of three claims in [the Salim lawsuit](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/salim-v-mitchell)
- **Prosecutions:** None

**Gul Rahman** was a prisoner who froze to death in [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) custody at the [Salt Pit](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/salt-pit), the agency's black site north of Kabul. [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) calls his *"a particularly sad case"*, and it is the death the agency admits to.[1][2]

## How he died

The fullest account Kiriakou has given attaches the whole [cold cell](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cold-cell) procedure to Rahman by name: *"Gul Rahman was subjected to a torture technique called the cold cell, in which he was chained to an eyebolt in the ceiling like this. He was stripped naked. His cell was chilled to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and then every hour a CIA officer would enter the cell and throw a bucket of ice water on him."* The outcome followed within the night: *"Gul Rahman was killed with that technique. He didn't make it through the night, and died of hypothermia."*[1]

The technique that killed him was not among the ten the Bush White House approved. Kiriakou's standing description of the [cold cell](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cold-cell) is that it was never authorised at all, and he has said the same of the deaths it produced.

## No prosecution

*"No one has ever been brought to justice for murdering Gul Rahman,"* Kiriakou says, and he sets the absence against the programme's own legal architecture rather than against morality: *"certainly the Justice Department never gave CIA officers permission to murder detainees during the course of their interrogations."* Whatever the Office of Legal Counsel memoranda authorised, in other words, they did not authorise this.[3]

He attributes the supervision directly: *"Gul Rahman's torture and death were overseen by [Mitchell and Jessen](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mitchell-and-jessen)"* — and again, *"there's no justice for Gul Rahman."*[3]

## The lawsuit

Rahman's family was the third claimant in [the civil suit](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/salim-v-mitchell) brought against the two contract psychologists, alongside the survivors Suleiman Salim and Mohamed Ben Soud. That case settled on sealed terms in August 2017 without reaching trial — an outcome Kiriakou said he was disappointed by, in part because a trial would have been the last chance to see the documents behind deaths like this one.[4][3]

## See also

- [Salt Pit](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/salt-pit)
- [Cold cell](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cold-cell)
- [The Salim lawsuit](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/salim-v-mitchell)
- [Mitchell and Jessen](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mitchell-and-jessen)
- [Enhanced interrogation techniques](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/enhanced-interrogation)

## Sources

1. CIA Torture Architects Settle With Victims to Avoid Trial (2017-08-17), at 04:50. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqv5Spq3KH8&t=290s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-08-17-the-real-news-network-cia-torture-architects-settle-with-victims-to/
2. Ep 5610 — The Torture of Abu Zubaydah (2021-10-11), at 19:17. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJ-wWaoF9iw&t=1157s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2021-10-11-scott-horton-ep-5610-the-torture-of-abu-zubaydah/
3. CIA Torture Architects Settle With Victims to Avoid Trial (2017-08-17), at 05:21. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqv5Spq3KH8&t=321s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-08-17-the-real-news-network-cia-torture-architects-settle-with-victims-to/
4. CIA Torture Architects Settle With Victims to Avoid Trial (2017-08-17), at 02:12. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqv5Spq3KH8&t=132s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-08-17-the-real-news-network-cia-torture-architects-settle-with-victims-to/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/gul-rahman/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt