16 May 2004	Sunday	25 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

KABUL, May 15: The US military is investigating a second case of alleged prisoner abuse to come to light in Afghanistan within the past week, a spokesman said on Saturday.

The military is already investigating allegations from a former Afghan police official that he was assaulted and deprived of sleep while in detention.

The US-led occupation forces in Afghanistan were notified on Thursday of "another allegation of detainee abuse", spokesman Lt Col Tucker Mansager told a press briefing in Kabul.

"There is an ongoing investigation into these allegations. As we have said before, we take all these allegations very seriously and upon notification we immediately began an investigation," he said.

"We are determined to find out all the facts and get to the bottom of the allegations."

Col Mansager did not elaborate on the latest allegations but said that the complaint had not come from the detainee, who was taken into custody last year and later released, but from a "second source".

"Because the US army's criminal investigative division is conducting the investigation, it would not be good right now for me to comment on the investigation because we do not want to prejudice the investigators and their outcome in any way shape or form," he said.

"The investigation will be thorough and complete and when it draws its conclusions appropriate actions will be taken against anybody who may be proved to have done something wrong."

On Wednesday the United States said it was investigating claims of abuse from an Afghan held for between 40 and 45 days and later released.

The man, a former police colonel, said he had been beaten and stoned while in US custody in Gardez and Kandahar.

A member of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said two more Afghan men had been interviewed and registered by the commission and had similar stories to that of the police official.

"They have accused the American soldiers of almost the same things as the police officer did," Ahmad Zia Langari said.

Mr Langari said the commission was considering writing to President Hamid Karzai to demand access to detainees.

Allegations of abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan emerged following shocking pictures of US soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees in Baghdad.

The United States is already investigating two deaths in custody in Afghanistan's Bagram district, some 50 kilometres north of Kabul, in Dec 2002.

Another man died while in detention at the Asadabad base, about 180 kilometres northeast of Kabul, in June last year, but local authorities said he had had a heart attack.

Despite strong calls from rights organizations to be allowed to visit detention facilities in Afghanistan, COl Mansager said there would be no change to the US policy of only allowing officials with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to visit detainees.

So far the ICRC had only visited the Bagram facility, he said.

The ICRC said it regularly insisted that it be notified of any arrests in Afghanistan and that the detainees be transported to Bagram with "minimum delay", a spokeswoman said. -AFP