For the first time since the US launched the so-called War on Terror, two former CIA contractors are in federal court.
Psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who designed the CIA's torture programme, are trying to get a judge to throw out the lawsuit filed on behalf of some of the men who were tortured.
More than 100 men say they were subjected to waterboarding and beatings during interrogations in Afghanistan.
According to the 2014 US Senate Intelligence Committee report on the torture programme, Mitchell and Jessen, who had no experience in interrogations, were paid $81m to teach the CIA how to break the detainees during questioning.
The Senate report called the programme "brutal" "physically harmful" and "not effective".
