KABUL - An international rights group said it knows of more prisoners dying in U.S. military custody in Afghanistan and called on Washington to reveal details of the cases.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld seen during a press briefing at the Pentagon in this November 2004 file photo. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

In an open letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Human Rights Watch revealed two new cases of deaths in custody and demanded an investigation into a third that took place three months ago.

"It's time for the United States to come clean about crimes committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan," Brad Adams, Asia Division director for Human Rights Watch, said on Monday.

Chris Grey, spokesman for the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Command in Washington, later told Reuters of another two prisoners who had died in U.S. detention, bringing the total number to eight.

The two new cases mentioned by the HRW in its letter to Rumsfeld involved the death of an Afghan army soldier mistakenly arrested with seven others in March last year, and the suspected murder of another detainee in 2002, HRW said.

The soldier, Jamal Naseer, died at the U.S. base at Gardez, southeast of Kabul in March, 2003. The army opened an investigation into the case in May, 2004, the rights group said.

Men detained with Naseer have said U.S. forces punched them, kicked them, hung them upside down, and hit them with sticks or cables. Some said they were soaked in cold water and forced to lie in snow, and given electric shocks to their toes, HRW said in its letter.

The rights group also said there was another previously unpublicised suspected murder of an Afghan detainee by four U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in or before September 2002.

Defense Department documents released to the American Civil Liberties Union in the past week show the Army opened an investigation in September, 2002. HRW says the document states that a captain and three sergeants murdered the Afghan, but it does not know if anyone was prosecuted.

The Army Criminal Investigation Command spokesman identified the dead man as M. Sayari and said he died on August 28, 2002. The investigation had closed, and the case was adjudicated by the Army, the spokesman said without giving further details.

The most recent reported death in custody was that of Sher Mohammad Khan, who died, HRW said, after being arrested during a raid at the village of Lakan in southeast province of Khost on Sept. 24.

The U.S. military said Khan died of a heart attack. Khan's brother was shot dead in the same raid. The military said he was killed in self defense.

The rights group had earlier taken the U.S. military to task over deaths of three other detainees, including two at Bagram airbase in December, 2002, that were ruled as homicides by U.S. military pathologists.

The Army Criminal Investigation Command announced in October that it had recommended 28 people for prosecution in connection with the deaths at Bagram.

© Copyright 2004 Reuters Ltd

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