- Human Rights Watch releases what it says is proof of CIA abuses against Libyans
- The report cites interviews with 14 people who say they were detainees
- The rights group says it also has documented evidence of the CIA's work
- The documents were found in the looted offices of the former Libyan intelligence chief
(CNN) -- Human Rights Watch says it has evidence the CIA waterboarded one Libyan detainee and brutally interrogated others before handing them over to Moammar Gadhafi.
In a 200-plus page report made public early Thursday, the rights group cites accounts of 14 former detainees and what it describes as "recently uncovered CIA and UK Secret Service documents" found in the sacked offices of Libya's former intelligence chief as proof of the torture and mistreatment.
The allegations directly challenge long-standing claims by President George W. Bush and his administration that only three terror suspects, none of whom were Libyan, were waterboarded during interrogations. Among those who officials have acknowledged were subjected to waterboarding was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, described as the principal architect of the September 11 terror attacks.
The rights group's accusations also come a week after the U.S. Justice Department closed a criminal investigation without charges into the deaths of two terror suspects in CIA custody.
The CIA and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request by CNN for comment on the allegations. CNN is unable to independently corroborate the claims by Human Rights Watch.
"The scope of Bush administration abuse appears far broader than previously acknowledged and underscores the importance of opening up a full-scale inquiry into what happened," said Laura Pitter, counterterrorism adviser at Human Rights Watch and author of the report entitled "Delivered Into Enemy Hands: US-led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to (Gadhafi's) Libya."
The heart of the report's allegations lie in documents related to the transfer of detainees, in some cases from the custody of the United States, to Gadhafi.
The documents were found by Human Rights Watch researchers on September 3, 2011, in the offices of former Libyan intelligence chief Musa Kusa after Tripoli fell in late August to rebel forces backed by NATO. Gadhafi was captured and killed by rebels in October 2011.
One of the documents -- a fax -- offers to help Libya pay for an airplane to pick up a prisoner, while a communiqué from a British intelligence officer to Kusa offers congratulations to Libya over its jailing of another former detainee handed over by the UK.
The report also largely relies on interviews with former detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch, many of whom claim to have been members of the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group (LIFG), which was working to overthrow Gadhafi in the early 1980s.
The group mostly fled Libya by the end of the 1980s and set up operations in Afghanistan where terror analysts say by at least by 2004 some members of the group aligned themselves with al Qaeda, though many former members maintain LIFG had nothing to do with the terror group.
The United States classified the LIFG as a terror organization in late 2004.
The documents and the interviews, according to Human Rights Watch, establish that the United States with aid from Britain and other countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, "arrested and held without charge a number of LIFG members living outside Libya, and eventually rendered them to the Libyan government."
A number of the detainees were picked up in Afghanistan, according to the report.
The report cites repeated allegations of torture by the detainees while in the custody of the United States and other countries: Being chained to a wall naked, forced into cramped positions, restrained in painful positions for long periods and undergoing repeated beatings.
Human rights groups consider waterboarding -- in which a prisoner is restrained and water poured over his mouth and nose to produce the sensation of drowning -- a form of torture.
In the report, Khalid al-Sharif claims to have been a detainee at a CIA facility in Afghanistan where he described being hooded, forced to lie down and his legs raised. "They poured the water over my mouth and nose so I had the feeling that I was drowning," he said.
Mohammed al-Shoroeiya, who also claims to have been picked up in Pakistan and detained in Afghanistan, describes a similar treatment in the report.
The men claimed to have been turned over to Gadhafi and then jailed. Some of the detainees claimed torture at the hands of Gadhafi's jailers, while other said they were not mistreated.
The detainees, according to the documents, were turned over to Libya during Gadhafi's brief role as a U.S. ally in the war on terror in 2004 before the civil war last year that led to the dictator's ouster.
Many of the detainees, according to the report, were freed during Libya's civil war and fought alongside the rebels.
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