Britain's Ministry of Defence is investigating fresh charges of mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq today after a newspaper published claims from a soldier that he had witnessed severe beatings.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair
The Daily Mirrorsaid the man had given military police full details of the attacks, including names and ranks of the soldiers involved in the beatings.
The soldier, a trooper with the same regiment already at the centre of an investigation into abuse of Iraqi prisoners, said the violence was led by three ringleaders.
"I witnessed four beatings when people where punched and kicked," the soldier told the Mirror. "They'd be on their knees, and when they dropped their hands they'd be kicked until they raised them again."
On one occasion, a corporal went up to a prisoner who had a sandbag over his face and poked his fingers into the man's eyeballs until he was screaming in pain, the soldier said.
The Ministry of Defence said an investigation was under way. A ministry spokesman said several investigations into charges of abuse were already ongoing and it was not clear if the new allegations referred to incidents that were already being examined.
The Mirror, which opposed the war in Iraq, published pictures last week apparently showing British soldiers urinating on a hooded prisoner and beating him with a rifle butt.
The pictures appeared soon after images emerged in the United States of US soldiers at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail humiliating naked prisoners, causing outrage in the Muslim world and beyond.
The Mirror'srival British newspapers have suggested the photographs the paper published of British troops might be fake, unlike the US pictures. The government says it is unsure of the authenticity of the Mirror's pictures but is investigating the allegations.