Psychologists who reportedly earned millions helping the CIA devise and implement post-9/11 interrogation techniques that critics call torture are facing a federal lawsuit on behalf of three men, one of whom died in the spy agency's custody.

Attorneys working on the case believe the Senate intelligence committee’s report on the CIA’s interrogation tactics, an executive summary of which was released in December, will lead to their victory.

“The Senate torture report is the basis on which we are able to file this lawsuit,” says Steven Watt, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Previous cases brought by the ACLU in response to the CIA interrogation program – such as a suit against former CIA Director George Tenet by wrongfully detained and allegedly tortured German citizen Khaled El-Masri and one against a Boeing subsidiary that allegedly transported torture victims – failed after the government said the cases would jeopardize state secrets.

“It would be absurd,” Watt says, for the government to make such claims against the new lawsuit. "All the information on which we rely for our clients’ claims is in the public record, primarily the Senate report," he says.

The two survivors involved in the lawsuit, Tanzanian citizen Suleiman Abdullah Salim and Libyan citizen Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, were never charged with a crime and say they were detained for years and tortured using the psychologists’ methods at CIA facilities.

Salim alleges he was kidnapped in Somalia, tortured and held for five years in Afghanistan. Ben Soud was captured in Pakistan, tortured and held two years in Afghanistan, the lawsuit says, until he was sent to Libya, where he was imprisoned by dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s government until 2011.

The third alleged victim represented in the lawsuit, Gul Rahman, whose estate is suing for damages on his behalf, died of suspected hypothermia in 2002 after being shackled sitting without pants on a cold floor, the Senate report says. The lawsuit says the report shows that one of the psychologists “oversaw and encouraged” Rahman’s treatment.

The psychologists named in the lawsuit, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, initially worked as independent contractors for the CIA after 9/11 to help break down detainees, earning $1.5 million and $1.1 million respectively, according to the Senate report, which identified the men using the pseudonyms "Grayson Swigert" and "Hammond Dunbar.”

In 2005, the duo formed a company and supplied the CIA with many interrogators, according to the Senate report. The company – known to be Mitchell, Jessen & Associates – was paid more than $75 million for its interrogation work into 2010. The CIA also agreed to provide $5 million from which the company could pull for legal costs, the report says.

The new lawsuit, filed in Washington state, seeks damages under the Alien Tort Statute, which allows lawsuits for human rights abuses. A lawsuit brought under the act that wound up in the same federal appeals court system – the 9th Circuit – resulted in judgments worth about $2 billion against the estate of former Philippines ruler Ferdinand Marcos in the 1990s.

Watt isn't asking for a particular dollar amount in damages, but says if the case is resolved in his clients' favor it "would be a significant sum" based on the seriousness of "egregious human rights violations such as use of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, nonconsensual medical experimentation and the war crimes equivalents."

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Indeed, the conduct alleged in the lawsuit is eye-opening.

Salim alleges when he was abducted, the CIA cut off his clothes and “once he was naked, they forcibly inserted an object into his anus, causing him excruciating pain.” He alleges he was photographed and dressed in a diaper before being spirited to another location, where he was subjected to “prolonged periods of sleep deprivation, repeated dousing in extremely cold water in a manner that approximated waterboarding, beatings, attention grabs, forceful slaps to the face and body, cramped confinement in two boxes – one coffin-sized and the other significantly smaller – and prolonged nudity.”

Ben Soud alleges similar mistreatment that, the lawsuit says, closely reflects the model for "learned helplessness" honed by the psychologists.

Despite Watt's optimism, legal experts say the lawsuit likely isn't headed for an easy victory.

"Suits under the Alien Tort Statute are always something of an uphill battle," says American University law professor Stephen Vladeck, "not because the claims aren’t incredibly serious, but because courts have erected a number of procedural and substantive roadblocks to relief even in the most compelling cases."

Vladeck expects one issue to be "whether the defendants’ allegedly torturous conduct was nevertheless within the scope of their federal employment." If it was, he says, the government likely will argue the case has to be dismissed and brought under a different law, the Federal Tort Claims Act, which offers many exceptions from liability for defendants.

He says the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit used similar reasoning in 2008 to dismiss Alien Tort Statute claims brought in Rasul v. Myers by four British detainees who had been released from the Guantánamo Bay prison.

Watt believes a similar ending won't befall the new case because the psychologists were independent contractors, not technically government employees.

However, other potential road bumps that could kill the lawsuit before its merits are considered include if the government asserts state secrets would be involved, regardless of the information disclosed in the Senate report.

Seton Hall University law professor Jonathan Hafetz says "'state secrets' have been interpreted broadly to preclude any kind of judicial avenue for redressing grave human rights violations," and that the government may well attempt to intervene to crush the case.

If the case is able to overcome procedural roadblocks, the plaintiffs have a strong likelihood of prevailing, says Hafetz, who is working with the ACLU on a separate lawsuit against FBI agents who allegedly kidnapped and tortured a U.S. citizen in East Africa.

"A ruling would be extremely valuable independent of any financial compensation," he says. "Merely a ruling itself that these individuals engaged in and facilitated torture would be an important victory for rule of law and human rights protection. … These defendants were responsible for a descent into lawlessness after 9/11 and I think it's imperative that the U.S. provide some sort of avenue for redress."

Mitchell and Jessen have not publicly responded to the lawsuit, but Mitchell has defended his conduct in the past. He told the Guardian last year that his techniques were successful, but that he could not address his work in detail because he signed a nondisclosure agreement with the government, the violation of which would subject him to criminal and civil penalties.

"The narrative that's out there is, I walked up to the gate of the CIA, knocked on the door and said: 'Let me in, I want to torture people, and I can show you how to do it.' Or someone put out an ad on Craigslist that said, 'Wanted: psychologist who is willing to design torture program.' It's a lot more complicated than that," Mitchell told the Guardian.