Human rights groups have called for the criminal prosecution of US officials after a Senate report detailed a CIA torture program that was far more brutal than previously known.
The groups said the report shows the Central Intelligence Agency's secret efforts to extract information from detainees after the 9/11 attacks repeatedly violated international law and basic human rights.
"This is a shocking report, and it is impossible to read it without feeling immense outrage that our government engaged in these terrible crimes," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"The government officials who authorised illegal activity need to be held accountable."
Amnesty International said the report makes clear that the CIA was acting unlawfully "from day one" and its brutal interrogations were not a rogue operation.
Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said the report "shows the repeated claims that harsh measures were needed to protect Americans are fiction".
He noted that President Barack Obama's administration has ended many of the practices described graphically in the report.
But he added: "Unless this important truth-telling process leads to prosecution of the officials responsible, torture will remain a 'policy option' for future presidents".
A Department of Justice official said that since 2009 it had already pursued two investigations into mistreatment of detainees and decided the evidence was not sufficient to obtain a conviction.
The official said investigators have reviewed the Senate report "and did not find any new information that they had not previously considered in reaching their determination".
'Brutal and far worse' than reported
The summary is the most extensive detailing of the CIA's brutal interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects yet.
Committee chair Senator Dianne Feinstein told the Senate that at least 119 individuals were subjected to "coercive interrogation techniques, in some cases amounting to torture".The detainees were rounded up by US operatives beginning in 2001 after al-Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Centre in New York and damaged the Pentagon, and through to 2009.
They were interrogated either at CIA-run secret prisons in allied nations or at the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Feinstein said some around the world "will try to use it to justify evil actions or incite more violence".
"We can't prevent that. But history will judge us by our commitment to a just society governed by law, and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say 'never again'."
While heavily redacted, the report is damning.
"The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others," it said.
The report - a review of more than six million pages of documents - concluded "the use of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of obtaining accurate information or gaining detainee cooperation".
Seven of the 39 detainees known to have been subjected to the enhanced interrogations "produced no intelligence while in CIA custody.
Counterproductive and contrary to American values: Obama
US President Barack Obama said CIA's actions were counterproductive and contrary to American values.
"The report documents a troubling program involving enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects in secret facilities outside the United States," Obama said on Tuesday.
"It reinforces my long-held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as nation, they did not serve our broader counter-terrorism efforts or our national security interests.
"Moreover, these techniques did significant damage to America's standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners," he added, in statement.
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