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US troops tortured prisoner to death

* Fourth US soldier to face court martial
* Mirror editor fired over ‘fake’ Iraqi abuse photos
* Bush assures G8 of getting to bottom of scandal

BERLIN: German television reported on Friday that US troops tortured to death an Iraqi prisoner in their custody in January this year and captured the abuse on film.

Spiegel TV said in a statement that it had witness accounts and documents to prove that 47-year-old Asad Abdul Kareem Abdul Jaleel had been killed at the US military base Al Asad west of the town Khan Al Baghdadi.

The investigative news program said that he had been picked up on the open road and taken to the base on suspicion of belonging to an insurgent group.

“A fellow prisoner gave Spiegel TV a detailed description how the man was sadistically tortured in the five days after his arrest,” the statement said.

“US soldiers also took photos of this abuse.”

Spiegel TV said that US forces had tried to cover up the death of the prisoner at Al Asad by declaring in a report that he had “died in his sleep” in a document signed by pathologist Luis A. Santiago. The death certificate stated that no autopsy had been conducted. But an Iraqi coroner who received the body of the prisoner from US forces told Spiegel TV that man’s body showed “clear signs of torture”.

“The photographs of the corpse, which Spiegel TV has also seen, indicate the man was tortured,” it said, adding that the body also appeared to have undergone an autopsy using “Western methods”. It said the man was a married father of seven, including seven-month-old twins. Employees of the Iraqi medical examination institute in Baghdad told Spiegel TV that they had seen other torture victims among the corpses handed over to them by the International Committee of the Red Cross on behalf of the US military.

Spiegel TV said that Iraqi coroners were told not to conduct an autopsy if an American death certificate was provided, even if the cause of death appeared not to correspond to the injuries.

Corporal Charles Graner will be the fourth US soldier to be court-martialed over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners when he faces seven charges including maltreatment, adultery and cruelty, the US military said.

Graner will be arraigned on May 20, the same day as two sergeants who each face five charges, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt told a news conference on Friday.

The editor of one of Britain’s most popular daily newspapers was fired on Friday for publishing faked pictures of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners.

Piers Morgan, editor of the Daily Mirror, was kicked out by the board of Trinity Mirror, which said it was “inappropriate” for him to continue as editor.

British soldiers at the centre of a scandal over alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners said photos purporting to show mistreatment were “complete nonsense” and put UK troops at risk by aiding recruitment for Al Qaeda.

US President George W Bush assured foreign ministers from the Group of Eight during talks Friday that he would get to the bottom of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal and see the culprits brought to justice, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said. —Agencies

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