Torture ... Still image taken from an Amnesty International film about waterboarding, the practice of torturing prisoners by partially drowning them. Picture: Amnesty International Source: AAP

The revelations, published on Tuesday, have dragged Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 and its foreign intelligence counterpart MI6 back into the spotlight and led to calls for a full judge-led inquiry.

Britain was Washington’s closest partner in the “War on Terror” and questions about British involvement in abuses have rankled for years, along with doubts about the close alignment with US foreign policy.

Tom Davies from Amnesty International said Britain seemed “afraid to turn over the rock for fear of what it will find underneath.”

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Spy centre ... the headquarters of Britain's MI6 intelligence agency in London. Picture: Bertrand Langlois/AFP Source: AFP

The British-based rights group has launched an online petition calling for the opening of a criminal investigation that had received nearly 14,000 signatures by Friday.

Britain’s press is also demanding that the public know what the security services did on their behalf.

“America now knows the truth about what it did. We in Britain do not,” Jenni Russell wrote in The Times demanding the publication of details about British involvement that were “removed” from the US report.

Downing Street on Thursday admitted that the Senate had given British agencies “limited sight of some sections” and that they had “highlighted a small number of issues in the proposed text where changes would be necessary to protect UK national security”.

Pressure ... Prime Minister David Cameron said that there are “questions” over the UK’s involvement in CIA torture. Picture: Roland Hoskins/Getty Images Source: Getty Images

But it said that “there was no question of the UK seeking redactions over any allegations of UK involvement in activity that would be unlawful in the UK.”

Prime Minister David Cameron admitted in 2010 that “there are questions over the degree to which British officers were working with foreign security services who were treating detainees in ways they should not have done.”

He asked retired judge Peter Gibson to lead an independent investigation, which produced a preliminary report that raised 27 serious queries about the behaviour of British security officers.

Specifically, Gibson said he wished to investigate “whether in some cases, UK officers may have turned a blind eye to the use of specific, inappropriate techniques or threats used by others”.

Parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC) then took over the reins and is due to publish its conclusions at the end of 2015.

When asked about the possibility of a full inquiry, Cameron’s office said it would adopt a “wait-and-see” policy pending the conclusions of the committee.