BAGHDAD, July 6: Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki said on Thursday that the blanket immunity enjoyed so far by foreign troops must be reviewed following allegations of rape and murder by US soldiers in Iraq.

“We have to review the immunity enjoyed by members of these forces or look for ways in which Iraqis can participate in the investigation,” he said.

“A lot of mistakes have been committed before Mahmudiyah that have caused grief and anger in the Iraqi people who cannot tolerate these brutal crimes for very long.”

In his last decree before the transfer of power from the US-led occupation authority to Iraqi officials, former US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer in June 2004 granted immunity from prosecution for coalition forces and private security contractors working with the Americans and US-backed Iraqi government.

US prosecutors on Monday charged a former soldier with raping and killing an Iraqi woman and gunning down three of her family members, including a five-year-old girl in March in the town of Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad.

The Justice Department has said that Steven Green, 21, could face the death penalty if convicted over the latest of a string of alleged atrocities committed by US soldiers against Iraqis.

Vice-President Tareq Al-Hashemi called on Thursday for severe punishment for the US soldiers responsible for the crimes and said the US government must make amends with the tribes of Mahmudiyah.

This came after demands by some MPs for an independent Iraqi investigation into the incident and calls by Justice Minister Hashem Al-Shibli for the United Nations to be involved in the case.—AFP