Majid Khan refused to eat, so CIA personnel fed him a lunch platter of raisins, nuts, pasta and hummus in a puree that they inserted into his rectum.

The incident, followed by similar involuntary insertions, was documented in the long-awaited summary of a Senate intelligence committee report on post-9/11 interrogation tactics.

Wells Dixon, an attorney for Khan since 2006, tells U.S. News those responsible for the humiliating, medically dubious conduct need to go to prison.

Dixon cannot legally provide more information about the rectal feeding reported in the 499-page summary released Tuesday, but says he wasn’t surprised by the findings.

“It’s forcible rape. It’s aggravated sexual assault, there’s no question about it. It’s a number of things,” says Dixon. “It’s torture. To the extent that the government would say the CIA program operated in the context of an armed conflict, it’s a war crime. It’s a grave breach of the Geneva Convention.”

The Senate report says Khan, a former Maryland resident picked up in Pakistan in 2003, frequently went on hunger strike to protest his treatment. During one such protest, he agreed to a nasogastric tube and an IV for hydration and nutrients.

Then, without consultation, CIA personnel began administering involuntary rectal insertions.

“They used the longest, widest tube that they could,” Dixon says. “I don’t think you need to get into more complicated questions of international law, you look at this and it’s very obviously forcible rape.”

At least five detainees were either rectally rehydrated or fed by the CIA, according to the report. CIA personnel also rectally fed Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, into whom an Ensure nutrient shake was administered "in a forwardfacing position... with head lower than torso,” according to a document quoted in the report.

“CIA medical officers discussed rectal rehydration as a means of behavior control,” the report says. “As one officer wrote, '[w]hile IV infusion is safe and effective, we were impressed with the ancillary effectiveness of rectal infusion on ending the water refusal in a similar case.'"

The CIA’s response to the report does not address rectal feeding allegations, but says rectal rehydration is a “well acknowledged medical technique” to treat dehydration, and was not done to aid interrogations or degrade prisoners.

Harvard Medical School professor Thomas Burke told the Washington Post rectal feeding and rehydration are not used in contemporary medicine and that feeding through the rectum in particular “doesn’t make any sense.” It’s unclear if medical personnel approved the intelligence officers’ actions.

Former Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel attorney John Yoo, author of the controversial so-called “Torture Memos” that justified harsh interrogation tactics, says top government lawyers did not approve rectal feeding in the aftermath of 9/11.

“In my time at DOJ, we did not authorize it,” says Yoo, who left the department in 2003 and now works as a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Yoo believes the report, crafted by Senate Democrats, is biased, but says some reported CIA activities were not approved by the Department of Justice, and he’s open-minded to the idea of prosecuting some CIA personnel, pending further investigation.

“Yes, there were things done that were not approved,” says Yoo. “Some of them were not acceptable, and would raise problems under the Justice Department’s reading of the law at the time.”

Yoo says he can’t yet say if he supports prosecution for those who rectally fed Khan. “It is an allegation, but what is bothering me, and should bother those demanding prosecution, is that the committee never interviewed anyone,” he says.

Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was initially kept in the dark about certain CIA practices, says he doubts the approval process for rectal feeding left the agency's chain of command.

Wilkerson wants punishment not only for alleged torturers, but also for Bush administration lawyers who approved interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, the use of stress positions and sleep deprivation.

“Those who reframed the law to make it appear that torture did not break the law, or that torture wasn't torture, at a minimum should be disbarred,” Wilkerson says.

“Yes, one could cherry-pick the [Senate] report and isolate a few lesser figures and go after them for particularly heinous activities,” he says. ”That might gives us a better taste in our collective mouths, but in the grand scheme of repairing our reputation in the world, it would accomplish little [and] perhaps more vitally, in the pursuit of real justice we would still be seen as falling dramatically short.”

The Senate report only covers activities of the CIA, which transferred Khan to military custody in Guantanamo Bay in 2006. Dixon could not comment on whether Khan was rectally fed by members of the military.

Richard Rosen, a former commandant of the U.S. Army’s Judge Advocate General's School, says if members of the military participated in rectal feeding, they should face prosecution. He’s not a specialist on the CIA, but says the same rules likely apply.

“The bottom line is that international law prohibits inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees and domestic law prohibits torture outside the United States,” says Rosen, now a law professor at the Texas Tech University School of Law. “The law applies regardless of whether the interrogator wears a uniform or not.”

The only former government official serving a prison sentence related to the CIA’s harsh interrogations is John Kiriakou, who opposed the tactics and was prosecuted for communicating with the press.

Kiriakou’s attorney Jesselyn Radack, a former Department of Justice ethics adviser who now represents whistleblowers, says she’s not optimistic anyone will be punished for the conduct detailed in the report.

“Unfortunately, the lack of accountability probably holds true for even the most rotten apples,” says Radack, who was unable to immediately reach Kiriakou, who is in prison, for reaction to the report.

Dixon, a senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, visited Khan last week and says he's doing well. Khan is cooperating with the government after pleading guilty to various crimes. Dixon has represented several other Guantanamo detainees, some of whom have been released, and hopes the public will one day hear their first-hand accounts of mistreatment.