- NEW YORK -- The Pentagon
came under renewed pressure last night over the conduct of American personnel
guarding prisoners in Iraq after its chief law enforcement officer revealed
that 25 detainees had died in US custody in the last 18 months.
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- Maj Gen Donald Ryder said that at least two of the deaths
were at the hands of Americans. They were among 35 cases in total of alleged
abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan which were the subject of criminal investigations.
-
- He said that an American soldier had been convicted of
murder for shooting a prisoner and discharged from the US army, escaping
a custodial sentence. Another prisoner was killed at the Abu Ghraib jail
near Baghdad by a private contractor who worked as an interrogator for
the CIA.
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- The disclosure of dozens of cases of the alleged abuse
or worse of prisoners came as Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary,
was embroiled in a worsening political row over the Pentagon's failure
to check the treatment of prisoners by its soldiers.
-
- Senior congressmen demanded that Mr Rumsfeld and Pentagon
top brass testify on Capitol Hill. They have been asked to appear this
week before the Senate Armed Services Committee in a public hearing to
testify on what one congressman described as an "unbelievable failure
. . . of oversight".
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- Mr Rumsfeld yesterday denounced any cruelty inflicted
on prisoners as "totally unacceptable and un-American".
-
- "Any who engaged in such action let down their comrades
who serve honourably each day and they let down their country," he
said.
-
- The Pentagon faced further embarrassment yesterday when
a classified army investigation detailing at least 20 examples of prisoner
mistreatment by Americans at Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi facilities was
leaked to the media. The report, by Maj Gen Antonio Taguba, accuses US
personnel of committing "egregious acts" and "grave breaches
of international law".
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- Among the most serious of the findings is that detainees
were sodomised with a broom stick and attacked by dogs.
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- Six soldiers have been reprimanded to date, while six
military policemen face criminal charges and others have been suspended.
-
- In Baghdad, Iraq's US-appointed minister for human rights
resigned yesterday in protest at the treatment of Abu Ghraib prisoners,
while the interior minister demanded that Iraqi officials be allowed to
participate in running prisons.
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