US: An international rights group said it knows of more prisoners dying in US military custody in Afghanistan, and Washington's failure to hold anyone accountable had created a culture of impunity.
"It's time for the United States to come clean about crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan," Mr Brad Adams, Asia Division director for Human Rights Watch (HRW), said yesterday.
In an open letter to US Defence 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.
The two new cases uncovered involved the alleged killing of an Afghan army soldier mistakenly arrested in March last year, and the alleged murder of another detainee in 2002, the group said.
The soldier, Jamal Naseer, died on the US base at Gardez in March 2003. The army opened an investigation in May 2004.
Men detained with Naseer allege that US forces punched them, kicked them, hung them upside down, and hit them with sticks or cables, among other abuses. Some said they were soaked in cold water and forced to lie in snow, and given electric shocks to their toes, HRW said.
The rights group also said there was another previously unpublicised alleged murder of an Afghan detainee by four US soldiers in Afghanistan in or before September 2002.
Official documents had been released in the last week showing the army opened an investigation in September 2002. HRW says the document states four troops were murdered the Afghan, but it does not know if anyone was prosecuted. - (Reuters)