NEWARK, N.J. -- A Tunisian man detained after the Sept. 11 attacks was tortured at CIA-operated secret prisons in Afghanistan months before a Justice Department memo sanctioned the practices, a lawsuit filed Thursday alleges.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Newark, is believed to be the first to allege acts of torture were committed before the secret Aug. 1, 2002, memo that approved waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods. The memo was declassified last week.

''It's impossible to claim that people who perpetrated torture relied on memos that didn't exist,'' said Josh Denbeaux, a northern New Jersey attorney who represents plaintiff Rafiq Alhami.

According to the lawsuit, Alhami was arrested in Iran in November 2001 and taken to Afghanistan to three CIA ''dark sites'' where ''his presence and his existence were unknown to everyone except his United States detainers'' and his name was not included on any publicly available list of detainees.

Beginning in December 2001, Alhami was tortured repeatedly, the lawsuit claims.

The methods were varied: At different times Alhami was stripped naked, threatened with dogs, shackled in painful ''stress'' positions for hours, punched, kicked and exposed to extremes of heat and cold. The suit also alleges Alhami's interrogators sprayed pepper spray on his hemorrhoids, causing extreme pain.

The lawsuit doesn't claim Alhami was waterboarded, a technique that simulates drowning.

The torture continued after Alhami was transferred to the U.S. Naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in January 2003, where he currently is held, according to the suit.

The Justice Department didn't immediately return a message seeking comment Thursday.

Alhami has denied being a member of a terrorist group, and claims he was arrested based on information provided to the Iranian government by an Iranian citizen seeking a bounty.

According to the lawsuit, sometime within the past 18 months Alhami was convicted in absentia in Tunisia for violating that country's Patriot Act, despite the act being passed in 2003, two years after he was detained by the U.S.

The suit seeks damages of $10 million and targets dozens of named and unnamed defendants, including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Navy Rear Adm. Mark Buzby, former commander of the detention center at Guantánamo.

Denbeaux said the allegations in the lawsuit were pieced together from Alhami's recollections, declassified documents and information from human rights organizations.

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