Danish probe confirm abuse of Iraqi inmates

The announcement was made by a team of military inspectors after a female officer, recalled from service with the multinational force in Iraq because of allegedly harsh interrogation methods, denied the charges against her.

The investigators said it appeared that the Danish battalion commanders in Iraq had "to a certain degree approved of these (interrogation) conditions or failed to intervene immediately or to order an inquiry into the case".

Peter Otken, special consultant to the investigative body, said Annemette Hommel had been charged under article 15 of the Danish military penal code for dereliction of duty, punishable by up to three years' jail in wartime or one year in peacetime. "This case covers four interrogations of Iraqis arrested (at Camp Eden in the Basra area of southern Iraq) between March and June 2004," the investigators said in their statement.

"They (the prisoners) were forced to take up stressful and painful postures and kept that way by force."

"There is no reason to suspect that the detainees were beaten or brutalised," it continued, "but they were verbally humiliated, for example by being addressed in a way particularly insulting to Muslims."

"During these interrogations, they were to a certain extent also refused food, water and access to toilets."

Defence Minister Soeren Gade on Tuesday ordered the immediate recall of Henrik Flach, the commander of the Danish contingent in Iraq, together with three senior officers, saying he no longer had confidence in them because they had failed to prevent the ill-treatment of prisoners.

Flach said on television on Thursday that Hommel had "gone beyond the limits in her interrogation methods".

But he said what had happened in his unit had been "a long way from the torture inflicted by American soldiers on Iraqis in Abu Ghraib jail".