U.S. human rights probe urged after Wikileaks release

"These new disclosures show torture at the hands of Iraqi security forces is rampant and goes completely unpunished," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "It's clear that US authorities knew of systematic abuse by Iraqi troops, but they handed thousands of detainees over anyway."              

Manfred Nowak, a United Nations expert on human rights charged with looking into torture incidents, told U.K. media over the weekend that the U.S. has an obligation under the United Nations Convention on Torture not to turn over detainees knowing there's a chance they will be subjected to torture.

"The US will lose credibility if it cannot face its own human rights violations squarely," wrote the state-run publication China Daily in an editorial on Monday.

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"The leaked documents let the world see through the unilateralism and double standards the US has used to trumpet human rights worldwide," the editorial stated.

The United States has previously criticized China over its human rights record and its treatment of political and religious activists. The communist nation has responded that it opposes intervention in its internal affairs.

In an incident reported by U.S. military personnel on January 7, 2002, and exposed on the Wikileaks site, Iraqi police took  prisoners to a gymnasium and then to an abandoned house "where the [Iraqi police] beat them. The identity of the individuals involved was redacted but the report stated that one or more detainees "died as a result of the abuse."

"As Coalition Forces were not involved in the alleged abuse, no further investigation is necessary," one of the reports stated. The incident took place at Husaybah, in the province of Fallujah west of Baghdad, the report stated.

In another incident further west, in Ramadi, there was no investigation initiated as of August 17, 2006, when a report stated that Iraqi police had been found "committing detainee abuse " at a police station.

A sergeant witnessed the whipping of a detainee across his back with a baton and saw another being kicked. The sergeant also later heard whipping noises and opened a door to find one officer "whipping the bottom of a detainee's feet" with electrical cable. The description of injuries included "circular whip marks, bleeding on back, and dark red bruising on back."

The United Kingdom's deputy prime minister said Sunday on U.K television that the allegations are "extraordinarily serious."

"Anything that suggests that basic rules of war and conflict and of engagement have been broken or that torture has in any way been condoned are extremely serious and need to be looked at," he said.

U.S. Department of Defense spokesman Geoff Morrell did not address the abuse allegations in a release on Friday.

He said U.S. intelligence reports show that enemy forces have been "mining" a previous unauthorized release of similar military reports for "operational vulnerabilities."

"We fear that this indeed can further endanger and get our troops killed," he said.