In 1990, as the Gulf War was gearing up, Stoltzfus co-led a delegation to Iraq which, along with similar efforts by Muhammad Ali, resulted in the release of 14 Western hostages. In a trip to Iraq after the US invasion in 2003, Stoltzfus interviewed family members of Iraqi detainees outside of the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. In 2003-04, CPT carried out critical background and deposition work, cited by Seymour Hersh in "The New Yorker", to expose Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse.