Papers released by the Pentagon to the American Civil Liberties Union uncover fresh details about alleged abuses at both the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The documents also detail a Guantanamo suicide attempt in February 2003.

The documents were released by the Department of Defense to the ACLU on Thursday and were made public by the ACLU yesterday. “These documents are the latest evidence of the desperate and immoral conditions that exist at Guantanamo Bay,” the executive director of the ACLU, Anthony Romero, said.

A medical report from April 2003 documents the condition of a Guantanamo detainee who attempted to hang himself with a towel in January. He was in a vegetative state for about three months after the attempt, and at the time of the report still showed damage to his brain and a “history of depression.”

The detainee’s medical examiners “most strongly advocate[d] for [redacted] earliest return to his home country,” but the papers do not indicate whether the military followed the advice.

Other documents offer further details of alleged abuses in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Supplements to a report about investigations of abuse in Guantanamo Bay include testimony from a major who said loud music and strobe lights were used during interrogations in 2003 as part of a “‘Fear Up’ approach” that was, according to the testimony, stopped after abuse at Abu Ghraib was made public. The major also said he was aware of a woman threatening detainees with fake menstrual blood and of detainees being chained to the floor with short chains.

A document detailing alleged abuses in Abu Ghraib detailed accusations of sodomy with foreign objects, beating, and containment in rooms so small that detainees could not stand up. The allegations were determined to be unfounded by American investigators.

Allegations of a man being tortured to death and his body being thrown at his siblings also were unsubstantiated by medical evidence, and the accusers were described as unreliable witnesses. The report said detainees may have been fed only bread and water for up to 17 days and held in small spaces for the “purposes of segregating combative or resistant detainees.”