Abuse in Iraqi prisons amounted to 'torture'

At a quickly-arranged news conference, the International Committee of the Red Cross' director of operations, Pierre Kraehenbuehl, said US authorities had broken international laws and their transgressions had been documented in an ICRC report.

"The elements we found were tantamount to torture... There were clearly incidents of degrading and inhuman treatment," he told reporters.

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"There are elements... which refer to actions that were contrary to international humanitarian law very clearly in that report," Kraehenbuehl said.

The document, which was submitted to the US government in February, summarized the findings of ICRC officials who visited coalition-run detention centres in Iraq between March 31 and October 24 last year to observe and conduct private interviews with prisoners.

It said Iraqis deemed to be of intelligence value to the United States were at high risk of being subjected to "a variety of harsh treatments" ranging from insults, threats and humiliations to both physical and psychological coercion, "which in some cases was tantamount to torture," in order to force cooperation with their interrogators.

Iraqis confined to US-run detention centers were frequently subjected to hooding, which made their breathing difficult, and painful handcuffing, the report said.

They were paraded in front of other prisoners naked, sometimes with women's underwear over their heads, exposed to loud noise and music, handcuffed to cell bars for several hours in humiliating or uncomfortable positions.

Prisoners were also stripped naked and held in solitary confinement for days in an empty and completely dark cell that included a latrine, according to the report.

"These methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information or other forms of cooperation from persons who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an 'intelligence value,'" the document said.

Officials from the Geneva-based agency discussed their discoveries with US overseer in Iraq Paul Bremer and the head of US forces in the country Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez on February 26, Kraehenbuehl said.