The decision by the District Court Judge Justin Quackenbush was a major achievement in the fight to hold CIA individuals responsible for conducting a program that according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) resulted in the torture of at least 119 men between 2002 and 2008.

The lawsuit was filed by the ACLU last October on the behalf of Suleiman Abdullah Salim, a Tanzanian national detained by the CIA and Kenyan security forces in Somalia in 2003; Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, a Libyan captured in a US-Pakistani raid the same year; and Gul Rahman, an Afghan national who died in 2002 in CIA custody from hypothermia that came by dehydration and exposure.