Berlin ? Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may not be able to leave quietly.

Civil rights activists filed a suit against him and other U.S. officials Tuesday for their alleged roles in abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay.

The 220-page document was sent to federal prosecutors under a German law that allows the prosecution of war crimes regardless of where they were committed. It alleges that Rumsfeld personally ordered and condoned torture.

Rumsfeld announced his resignation a day after midterm elections.

The suit is on behalf of 12 alleged torture victims – 11 Iraqis held at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison and Mohamad al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Al-Qahtani was captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. He would not crack under normal questioning, so Rumsfeld approved harsher methods, according to testimony before Congress.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said officials had not yet seen the complaint.