CIA report: Prosecutions unlikely as Obama says ‘move on’

Minutes after a US Senate intelligence panel released details of the CIA's torture of terrorism suspects, US President Barack Obama suggested the country should move on. The US Department of Justice, which has the power to bring criminal charges, looks set to take him at his word.

Criminal prosecutions of those who ran secret prisons and "enhanced interrogations" between 2002 and 2006, look unlikely despite demands by civil rights advocates. So do efforts to hold to account politicians who authorised the CIA actions.

"Rather than another reason to refight old arguments, I hope that today's report can help us leave these techniques where they belong - in the past," said Obama, who banned harsh interrogation techniques in 2009.

By then, president George W. Bush had ended many aspects of "Rendition, Detention and Interrogation" that he authorised after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

A senior law enforcement official said the Justice Department had no plans to reopen a criminal investigation. That inquiry, which narrowed to two cases in which prisoners died in CIA custody, was closed in 2012 with no criminal charges.

The CIA and its supporters argue their actions were authorised by the Bush-era Justice Department and the White House.