THE world responded with a mixture of anger and indignation today to the release of the US Senate report on CIA torture of terror suspects.

The United Nations and a range of human rights groups called for the prosecution of US officials involved in the illegal and brutal interrogations.

UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism Ben Emmerson said that senior officials of the time, those who planned and sanctioned such crimes, should be prosecuted alongside CIA agents responsible for torture.

“As a matter of international law, the US is legally obliged to bring those responsible to justice,” Mr Emmerson said in Geneva.

“The US attorney general is under a legal duty to bring criminal charges against those responsible.”

He said the Senate intelligence committee report showed “there was a clear policy orchestrated at a high level within the Bush administration, which allowed … gross violations of international human rights law.”

And Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said that the CIA actions had been criminal and “could never be justified.

“Unless this important truth-telling process leads to prosecution of officials, torture will remain a policy option for future presidents,” he said.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said the attorney general should appoint a special prosecutor to conduct “an independent and complete investigation of Bush administration officials who created, approved, carried out and covered up the torture programme.”

The ACLU warned that “torture has no statute of limitations when torture risks or results in serious injury or death, and the US government has the obligation under international law to investigate any credible evidence that torture has been committed.”

Meanwhile, the US embassies in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Thailand warned US citizens abroad that “the release of the document … could prompt anti-US protests and violence against US interests, including private US citizens.”

Elsewhere, Polish former president Aleksander Kwasniewski said that during his term Poland offered the CIA a site for a secret prison but did not authorise such treatment of inmates.

His comments were the first time a Polish leader has admitted the country hosted a secret CIA site.