A recent report detailing the alleged involvement of U.S. officials in utilizing "enhanced interrogation techniques" on detainees captured after 9/11 has drawn shock from members of the faith community.

The report was released on Monday by the group Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) who found evidence that the Bush administration not only tortured detainees in C.I.A custody but conducted human experiments in breach of international laws.

The group further found that evidence from the experiments was used to provide legal cover for the torture, as well as aid in justifying further use of the techniques.

"The CIA appears to have broken all accepted legal and ethical standards put in place since the Second World War to protect prisoners from being the subjects of experimentation," said Frank Donaghue, PHR's Chief Executive Officer. "Not only are these alleged acts gross violations of human rights law, they are a grave affront to America's core values."

PHR is currently demanding that the Obama administration investigate the allegations and prosecute anyone found responsible.

The group is also calling on Congress to remove changes made to the War Crimes Act in 2006 by the Bush administration which allow a more permissive definition of the crime of illegal experimentation on detainees in US custody.

In wake of the report, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) has launched a video supporting the PHR's findings, which includes a call on the faith community to help lobby the federal government to take action.

"There are hundreds of cases involving both the tortured and the torturer where individual lives have been damaged by the use of torture by the United States in an illegal and immoral effort to gain information," Jim Winkler, general secretary of the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society ,says in the video clip.

"When our government engaged in the fundamentally immoral act of torture it broke its trust with the American people, it violated U.S. law, and it made our country and our troops less safe," the Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in the U.S., adds.

"As religious leaders we commend Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) for their groundbreaking work uncovering and documenting evidence of the involvement of United States military and intelligence health professionals in performing experiments, without consent, on detainees in the custody of the U.S. following September 2001," said the Rev. Richard Killmer, NRCAT executive director, adding that torture is "immoral and abhorrent, violating the teachings of all our religious traditions."

Killmer, whose group represents a coalition of 280 religious organizations from Roman Catholic, evangelical Christian, mainline Protestant, Unitarian, Quaker, Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Baha'i, Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh traditions, also noted that apart from the torture, such medical experiments could be constituted as war crimes or crimes against humanity.

"These revelations are profoundly disturbing and raise for us the question of what more remains hidden," Killmer said. "The spiritual health of our nation will continue to suffer until the full truth opens a path to the justice and healing that our nation so desperately needs."

Furthermore, the NRCAT has designated June as "Torture Awareness Month," during which the group hopes to pass federal laws that grant the Red Cross access to detainees in U.S. custody and secure a Commission of Inquiry into the use of torture by the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001.

On the web:

"Accounting for Torture" video