'Torture in US-run jails not isolated incidents'

"We are here to tell the world that the cases of torture of Iraqi prisoners are not isolated incidents and they are not limited to Abu Ghraib prison, nor to the six US MPs," a spokeswoman for the Iraqi Human Rights Organisation (IHRO) told a news conference in Baghdad.

Seven US Military Police (MPs) have been charged with abusing Iraqi prisoners after a global scandal erupted with the publication of photographs of naked detainees being humiliated at Abu Ghraib prison just outside Baghdad.

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US spokesman Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said Specialist Jeremy Sivits would face a court martial in Baghdad next week, accused of abusing detainees.

President Bush has said the acts were "the wrongdoing of a few" and did not reflect the character of the 200,000 military personnel who have served in Iraq.

But rights groups disputed those assertions.

"These are part of a systematic method of torture and inhuman treatment," the IHRO spokeswoman said.

People who said they had been victims of torture and relatives of detainees told the news conference of their degrading treatment in the US prisons.

None of the accounts could be verified independently and there was no immediate comment on these specific cases from the US military. However, Kimmitt told a separate news conference all allegations would be investigated.

"The primary objective is to point out that there are systematic abuses taking place in the American prisons," said Stewart Vriesinga of the Christian Peacemakers Team.

"Iraqis are treated in a dehumanized way."

Issam al-Hammad said the Americans came to his village near al-Qaim on the Syrian border looking for his father, Abid Hammad al-Mahoosh, a major general in the disbanded Iraqi army.

He wasn't there, so they took Issam and his three brothers, the youngest of them age 16. "We spent five and a half months in four detention centers," Issam al-Hammad said.