BERLIN — Civil rights activists filed suit yesterday asking German prosecutors to open a war crimes investigation of outgoing Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and a host of other American officials for their alleged roles in abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay.

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

“One of the goals has been to say a torturer is someone who cannot be given a safe haven,” the president of New York’s Center for Constitutional Rights, which is behind the litigation, Michael Ratner, said. “It sends a strong message that this is not acceptable.”

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 American military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who has been identified by America as a would-be participant in the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, Mr. Qahtani would not crack under normal questioning, so Mr. Rumsfeld approved harsher methods, according to testimony before Congress.

After FBI agents raised concerns, military investigators began reviewing the case and in July 2005 said they confirmed abusive and degrading treatment that included forcing Mr. Qahtani to wear a bra, dance with another man, stand naked in front of women, and behave like a dog. Still, the Pentagon determined “no torture occurred.”

Although German prosecutors already declined to investigate a more limited suit in 2005, the attorneys involved think they have a better case this time armed with documents from congressional hearings on the Qahtani case. They argue that Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation means prosecutors may be under less political pressure to shun the case.

They also have a former brigadier general of the Army, Colonel Janis Karpinski, who was the one-time commander of all American military prisons in Iraq, as a witness on their behalf.

Mr. Rumsfeld announced his resignation a day after midterm elections in which opposition to the war in Iraq contributed to heavy Republican losses. But he plans to remain in his post until the Senate confirms his successor. President Bush said he would nominate a former director of central intelligence, Robert Gates, to replace Mr. Rumsfeld.

At the Pentagon, spokesman Bryan Whitman said officials had not yet seen the complaint, and he played down its significance.

“Abu Ghraib is something that the U.S. government has investigated very thoroughly,” Mr. Whitman said, noting more than a dozen inquiries and some hearings before the U.S. Congress.