The FBI has thousands of pages of records in its files relating to the monitoring of civil rights, environmental and other advocacy groups, the US Justice Department admitted today.

At least 108 people have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of them violently, according to US government data.

Human rights groups filed a lawsuit against US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of eight men allegedly tortured by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pentagon officials are investigating new allegations by a civil liberties group that military interrogators at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay questioned detainees under the guise of friendlier FBI agents.

US MARINES forced Iraqi youngsters to kneel while troops discharged a weapon in a mock execution, used electric shocks on one prisoner and set fire to a puddle of solvent that burned one of them, according to US Navy documents.

Fresh claims of a prisoner abuse cover-up in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay hit the US military today.