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."