The release of the US Senate intelligence committee's report on the CIA's secret prisons has roiled Washington, but its real impact could be felt in courtrooms across the globe in the months and years to come.

Attorneys for human rights organisations are now poring over the declassified summary of the Senate majority report to find new material that could revive long-dormant and failed civil and criminal lawsuits on behalf of those detained by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Advocate for openness: Senate intelligence committee chairwoman Senator Dianne Feinstein who released the report on the CIA's use of torture. Photo: AP

In Australia, former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib has warned the federal government he intends to reopen his legal cases after the release of the report. Mr Habib who was arrested in Pakistan, taken to Egypt and tortured before being taken to Guantanamo Bay, told Fairfax Media the new information was likely to lead to the reopening of some proceedings and also allow him to take action against the US government.

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While many American and international non-governmental organisations have mounted legal challenges on behalf of people who were detained, transferred and harshly interrogated by the CIA and allied governments, these court challenges have rarely been successful. One reason is that the US Justice Department under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have asserted that almost all details about the CIA program were a state secret. And while some government reports have been released about the black sites, the Senate committee's majority report released on Tuesday is the most comprehensive and detailed document to date.

"One of the tragedies about this is the attempt to find redress," said Andrea Prasow, the deputy director of the Washington office for Human Rights Watch. "Judges have accepted the state secrets claim. Now it will be much harder to do that when we all have access to a 500-page public report that details a lot of this."

Australian citizen: Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib says the release of the report may allow him to take action against the US government. Photo: Janie Barrett

The chances of a US court reopening civil or criminal charges against US officials involved with the CIA program are slim. But European courts may be a different story. Some human rights groups are now seeking to petition European courts to renew efforts to prosecute Bush administration officials under the principle of universal jurisdiction. That principle was established in 1998, when a Spanish court indicted Augusto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile, for his role in the murder and torture of many of his political opposition. When Pinochet was travelling through Britain in 1998, he was arrested by order of the Spanish court. (British officials released him back to Chile two years later.)

"After reviewing this report, we will give consideration to reopening petitions or filing new petitions in European courts under the principles of universal jurisdiction," said Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, a group that has represented Guantanamo detainees including Majid Khan and Abu Zubaydah, two detainees who went through the CIA's black-site prisons.

Mr Azmy's organisation has failed to persuade courts in Germany, Canada and France to open cases against Bush administration officials, but still has one pending in Spain. Now he is hopeful the Senate's declassified report could change things.

Mistreated: Terror suspect Abu Zubaydah was subjected to simulated drowning, or waterboarding, and sleep deprivation. Photo: AP

"This suggests the possibility of reopening those cases," he  said. "We are filing additional petitions against the CIA and high-level officials."

He added: "The comprehensiveness and detail of this declassified report is thorough evidence of a criminal conspiracy of US officials to torture dozens of human beings."

Raha Wala, senior counsel at Human Rights First, a group that advocated for the report's release, told us, "I would fully expect that individuals who were subjected to these programs would take up civil actions in court to get some sort of remedy for these human rights violations."

 Former senior intelligence officials also expect the new report could provide fodder for new lawsuits.

Christopher "Kit" Bond, the Republican who served as vice-chairman of the Senate intelligence committee when that panel began its work on the report, also said he was expecting new lawsuits.

"There is untold damage that could come from this," he told said. "Having the US government go on record condemning the critical terror-investigating agency of the US government puts us at tremendous risk. There is no telling what could happen. Lawsuits will be a major challenge."

Among those who could take advantage of the report's details are the more than 130 detainees still stuck at Guantanamo, who are languishing in the military commissions process and have been the subject of years-long prosecutions mired in protracted litigation.

Bloomberg