Nearly 100 dead in US custody in Iraq, Afghanistan (AFP) Updated: 2006-02-22 10:25
Nearly 100 prisoners have died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since
August 2002, the Human Rights First organisation said on BBC television.
At least 98 deaths occurred, with at least 34 of them suspected or confirmed
homicides -- deliberate or reckless killing -- according to the group of US
lawyers who were to publish their report on Wednesday.
An Iraqi detainee
gestures toward US soldiers through bars of his cell at Abu Ghraib prison
outside Baghdad. [AFP] |
Their dossier claims that 11 more deaths are deemed suspicious and that
between eight and 12 prisoners were tortured to death.
The number of deaths in custody discounts those due to fighting, mortar
attacks or violence between detainees. They were directly attributable to their
detention or interrogation in American custody, the BBC's Newsnight programme
said.
The report alleged that one person was made to jump off a bridge into the
Tigris river in Iraq and another was forced inside a sleeping bag and
suffocated.
The report's editor Deborah Pearlstein told Newsnight: "We're extremely
comfortable with the veracity and the reliability of the facts here.
"These are documents based on army investigative reports, documents that
we've obtained from the government or that have come out through freedom of
information act requests in the United States."
Newsnight was told by the US Pentagon: "We haven't seen the report yet. Where
we find allegations of maltreatment we take them very seriously and prosecute."
Doctor Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, told the BBC: "There are
thousands of prisoners that have been held by the coalition during the past more
than two years.
"Some have died of natural causes and there have been charges of abuse. Of
course, we always investigate and determine what happened and appropriate
punishment is given if the judgment is made that illegal actions took place.
"If those reports are true, of course they would be terrible abuses and they
would be illegal things. Those who are responsible for them would be
investigated and they will be punished."
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