Friday, May 21, 2004

This week's late-afternoon-on-Friday announcement:

The Pentagon has begun criminal investigations of at least 37 deaths involving detainees held by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, officials said Friday. There are 33 cases involved, the officials said, eight more than the military reported two weeks ago.

The officials said they could not immediately say for sure the exact number of deaths involved.

Eight pending cases have been classified as homicides involving suspected assaults of detainees before or during interrogation sessions, a senior military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Of the total number of cases, 30 were inside U.S.-run detention facilities and three were outside. Fifteen of the 30 cases were declared by U.S. authorities to be deaths by natural cause or of undetermined cause, the senior official said.

Of the 15 other cases that happened inside detention facilities, four were categorized as justifiable homicides, two as homicides, and nine were still under active investigation, the official said. Eight of those nine have been classified as homicides involving suspected assaults on detainees before or during questioning.

Six of the nine unresolved cases happened in Iraq including two at Abu Ghraib prison and three were in Afghanistan.

The 33 total cases date from December 2002 to the present....

--AP

Keep saying it to yourself: Just a few bad apples ... just the MPs in the pictures ... just for that short period of time ... just in that one prison ...

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