Iraq abuse rife, say rights groups

PHOTO images of American soldiers abusing and humiliating prisoners in Iraq may be just the tip of the iceberg and only a non-military inquiry will expose the full extent of the problem, human rights groups said yesterday.

In hundreds of interviews with former detainees over the past nine months, rights groups say a clear pattern of abuse has emerged, with the vast majority of prisoners saying they were beaten, hooded, deprived of sleep and often stripped.

In some isolated cases the abuse was much worse, they say, with detainees sodomized or sexually assaulted.