US soldiers secure a building holding Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, in 2004. A California-based filmmaker has filed a lawsuit here against top military officials over his detention by US forces in Iraq in 2005, court documents filed here show. [AFP]

A California-based filmmaker has filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles against top military officials over his detention by US forces in Iraq in 2005, court documents filed here show.

Cyrus Kar, 45, filed his case in US federal court in Los Angeles on Friday, arguing that his rights and the treatment of prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention were violated when US forces detained him for 55 days between May and July 2005.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the US military commander in Iraq, General George Casey, are named as defendants in the case.

Kar was in Iraq working on a documentary on Persian emperor Cyrus the Great (576-529 BCE) when US soldiers arrested him and his Iranian cameraman at checkpoint northeast of Baghdad on May 17.

Soldiers said they found washing machine timers -- often used as key parts for roadside bombs in Iraq -- inside the taxi the two were traveling in.

Kar, a US navy veteran of Iranian ancestry, was set free only after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued for his release.

Kar became a US citizen in 1966 after immigrating to the United States with his family from Iran.

According to the lawsuit, Kar was hooded and handcuffed when he was transported to a detention center, where he was aggressively interrogated and was exposed to hours in the sun in extremely hot temperatures.

A soldier at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad even slammed his head into a concrete wall at one point, according to the suit.

"For almost two months, Mr. Kar sat alone for 23 hours each day in a cramped jail cell, not knowing why he was there or whether he would ever be released," reads the lawsuit, filed on Kar's behalf by the ACLU.

Even though FBI agents cleared him of suspicion, he did not have access to an attorney and was able to make only a few short phone calls to his family. And the US military did nothing to send him home even after a military panel recommended his immediate release, according to the court papers.