Poland's former president has publicly acknowledged for the first time that his country hosted a secret CIA prison where a US Senate report says torture was used against Al Qaeda suspects.

Aleksander Kwasniewski said that as president he put pressure on the United States to end brutal CIA interrogation at the secret prison on Polish soil in 2003.

"I told (then US president George W) Bush that this cooperation must end and it did end," Mr Kwasniewski told local media.

He was speaking a day after the scathing Senate report revealed the CIA had used methods amounting to torture to interrogate prisoners after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Mr Kwasniewski, president between 1995 and 2005, said he raised Polish concerns over CIA activities in Poland face-to-face with Mr Bush at the White House in 2003.

He said Mr Bush insisted the intelligence agency's methods provided "important benefits in security matters", a claim disputed by the report.

Senate Intelligence Committee key findings "Enhanced interrogation techniques" were not an effective means of acquiring intelligence

"Enhanced interrogation techniques" were not an effective means of acquiring intelligence The CIA made inaccurate claims about the effectiveness of the techniques

The CIA made inaccurate claims about the effectiveness of the techniques Interrogations were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others

Interrogations were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others Detainees were kept in conditions harsher than the CIA admitted

Detainees were kept in conditions harsher than the CIA admitted Coercive interrogation techniques were not approved by the Department of Justice or authorised by CIA HQ

Coercive interrogation techniques were not approved by the Department of Justice or authorised by CIA HQ The CIA did not count how many individuals it detained, and held people who did not meet the legal standard for detention

The CIA did not count how many individuals it detained, and held people who did not meet the legal standard for detention CIA operatives were rarely held accountable for serious and significant violations

"The Americans conducted their activities in such secrecy, that it raised our concern," Mr Kwasniewski said.

"Polish authorities acted to end these activities and they were stopped under pressure from Poland."

Mr Kwasniewski said Poland had agreed to "beefed-up intelligence cooperation" with the US within the framework of NATO after the September 11 attacks, but insisted he was unaware that the CIA practised torture at its secret facilities.

Poland allowed the CIA to hold terror suspects on its soil on the condition they were "treated as prisoners of war", he said, adding that the US never signed the memorandum of understanding that included this stipulation.

Those who broke international laws prohibiting torture must be prosecuted, Mr Kwasniewski said.

The European Court of Human Rights slammed Poland in July for complicity in torture on its territory of a Palestinian and a Saudi, later sent to the notorious US Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba.

The court concluded Poland had cooperated in the CIA's notorious "rendition" program.

The CIA disputes the findings of the Senate report, which says 119 detainees were captured and imprisoned in secret CIA "black sites" in countries whose names were redacted.

Previous news reports suggested the sites were located in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Thailand.

Polish prosecutors have been probing allegations of the secret prison since 2008.

They said they will ask for access to the damning report.

China calls on US to 'correct its ways'

China joined other countries condemning the actions of the CIA, urging the US to "correct its ways".

"China has consistently opposed torture," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.

"We believe the US side should reflect upon itself, correct its ways and earnestly respect and abide by the rules of international conventions."

Rights groups say China's own justice system is riddled with abuses and that it is not uncommon for confessions to be extracted through torture.

Beijing said it attaches great importance to human rights and that it carries out detentions in accordance with the law.

China and the US regularly spar over human rights, with Washington expressing concern over the detention and jailing of prominent rights activists by China's communist authorities.

Germany said the CIA torture detailed in the Senate report was "a gross violation of our liberal, democratic values" and "a serious mistake" that must never happen again.

German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier praised the Obama administration for declassifying the information, calling it a transparent move that marked a clear break with his predecessor Mr Bush.

"What was then considered right and done in the fight against Islamist terrorism was unacceptable and a serious mistake," Mr Steinmeier, a centre-left social democrat, said.

"Such a gross violation of our liberal, democratic values must not happen again."

Afghanistan also joined the criticism with new president Ashraf Ghani saying the United States' actions violated "all accepted principles of human rights" and were part of vicious cycle of violence.

"The Afghan government condemns these inhumane actions in the strongest terms," he said at a specially-convened press conference at the presidential palace in Kabul.

"There can be no justification for these kinds of actions and inhumane torture in today's world.

"This report is 499 pages long and since downloading it from the internet last night I have read every single word of it.

"This is a vicious cycle. When a person is tortured in an inhumane way, the reaction will be inhumane.

"And thus a vicious cycle of action and reaction is created."

UN says there should be no impunity

The United Nations high commissioner for human rights said there should be no impunity or statute of limitations for torture.

The Convention against Torture prohibits torture and allows for "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever", not even a state of war, as justification, Zeid Ra'ad Al-Hussein said in a statement issued in Geneva on the annual human rights day.

"The Convention lets no one off the hook - neither the torturers themselves, nor the policy-makers, nor the public officials who define the policy or give the orders," he said.

The pact has been ratified by 156 countries.

"To have it so clearly confirmed that it was recently practised - as a matter of policy - by a country such as the United States is a very stark reminder that we need to do far, far more to stamp it out everywhere," Mr Zeid said.

"This has been true at the best of times.

"It is particularly true during this period of rising international terrorism, when it has shown a tendency to slither back into practice, disguised by euphemisms, even in countries where it is clearly outlawed."

US returns tortured prisoner to Afghan: lawyer

The report's release comes as the US handed a suspected Al Qaeda militant, named in the document as one of the objects of harsh CIA interrogation techniques, over to the custody of the Afghan government, his lawyer said.

The US government said Ridha al-Najar, a Tunisian, was handed over from the US detention centre at Bagram on Tuesday, said the lawyer, Tina Foster.

She said Najar was the subject of a case at the US Supreme Court that sought to establish jurisdiction over him, and that the court had required the US government to respond by December 15.

The Senate report said the CIA had used Najar to test some of its harsher interrogation techniques.

Meanwhile, five of the six former Guantanamo inmates the US returned to Uruguay at the weekend will likely move into a house in the capital Montevideo, according to the labor union providing the lodging.

The men have undergone medical checks in a military hospital since they arrived on Sunday as part of a deal aimed at helping US president Barack Obama fulfil his long-delayed promise to close the prison set up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Five of them - three Syrians, a Palestinian and a Tunisian - will "probably" move into a house set up for them in Montevideo that resembles "any ordinary worker's," said Fernando Pereira of national labor union federation PIT-CNT.

He said the sixth, 43-year-old Syrian national Jihad Diyab, will remain in hospital to recover from a hunger strike that left him weakened and sparked a US court battle over prison officials' right to force feed him.

The men, all in their 30s and 40s, were among the first detainees sent to Guantanamo in 2002, detained as part of the US "War on Terror" for alleged links to Al Qaeda. They were never charged or tried.

The former inmates have been kept under tight security, a measure the Uruguayan interior minister said is for their own safety and will continue after they leave hospital.

The men will take Spanish classes and receive professional training at the house, a temporary residence until they settle elsewhere along with their families, Mr Pereira said.

But he said their adaptation to Uruguay "will not be easy" after more than 12 years at Guantanamo.

AFP/Reuters