March 7, 2003	Friday	Muharram 3, 1424

KABUL, March 6: The US military in Afghanistan on Thursday confirmed it was probing the deaths from “blunt force injuries” of two prisoners held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

Colonel Roger King, a US military spokesman said a criminal investigation had begun into how the two men, aged around 28 and 35, died last December while at the American army’s Afghan headquarters at Bagram, north of Kabul.

“I can confirm the CID (criminal investigation department) investigation. CID will investigate any death that occurs in custody.

The New York Times and Washington Post reported this week that one of the death certificates noted homicide as the mode of death.

“The cause of death listed on the death certificate, based on the preliminary autopsy, was pulmonary embolism due to blunt force injury (for the 28-year-old), and blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease (35-year-old),” King said.

The US military has not released the identities of the dead men, who the New York Times said were both Afghans.—AFP