THE coalition effort in Iraq suffered another blow yesterday when a leaked report from the International Red Cross accused its forces of beating and humiliating Iraqi prisoners on a routine basis.

The report condemned physical and psychological abuse employed by US troops at Abu Ghraib prison as “standard operating procedure”.

The Red Cross complained that US officials had ignored its repeated and details complaints over many months.

The report was less damning of British troops, although it was sharply critical of an incident in which a detainee died in British custody in Basra.

It also revealed that British troops had broken a 30-year-old ban against “hooding” prisoners under their control, but Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, told the Commons yesterday that the practice had been quickly stamped out.

To the lay reader, the 24-page report will appear a comprehensive indictment of all coalition forces, since it identifies them not by nationality, but by where they are based. It will leave troops from Britain and other coalition countries as vulnerable to Iraqi retaliation as those from America.

The report was damning about US treatment of Iraqis, and the refusal of US officials to respond to Red Cross complaints. It said that as long ago as last October the Red Cross had complained about interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison, scene of the photographs of abuse that have triggered international outcry.

The frequent complaints included details of routine beatings and humiliation, some of which resulted in death. The report says that despite warnings, not just about Abu Ghraib but other jails, the abuse remained so persistent that it “might be considered as a practice tolerated by the coalition forces”.

The report lists at least five official complaints made after March 2003 about general ill-treatment of prisoners in Iraq and talks of repeated oral complaints lodged with “coalition forces” throughout 2003. Red Cross officials made 29 visits to 14 jails between March and November 2003.

The report, leaked to The Wall Street Journal, also contains an admission by military intelligence officers that 70 to 90 per cent of Iraqis sent to prison had been arrested by mistake. Other abuse at Abu Ghraib documented in the report included men made to walk in the corridors handcuffed and naked, or with women’s underwear on their heads.

Despite the report, President Bush delivered a lavish show of support for Donald Rumsfeld, his Defence Secretary, saying that he was “doing a superb job” in leading the war on terrorism.

But a Gallup opinion poll published last night suggested that the scandal was eroding support for the US intervention in Iraq. For the first time a majority of Americans — 54 per cent — thought the war was not worth it, a rise of seven points in a month.

Mr Hoon and Tony Blair said that neither they nor other ministers had seen the Red Cross report until very recently because the abuses that it highlighted relating to British forces had been tackled.

However the Defence Secretary echoed the Prime Minister’s apology for any ill-treatment of Iraqi prisoners and suggested that two soldiers could be prosecuted soon. Though the Red Cross report spares the British military its harshest criticism, an Amnesty International report today will claim that British soldiers shot and killed Iraqi civilians when they were under no apparent threat.

Mr Hoon said the Red Cross report had been passed to Britain in confidence by the US head of the coalition administration, Paul Bremer, in February. Copies went to the Prime Minister’s envoy in Iraq at the time, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK military representative in Iraq, and Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, northwest London.

Officials there decided that, as all the issues relating to British forces had been dealt with, the report did not need to be referred to ministers.

These included the death in custody of an Iraqi hotel receptionist, Baba Mousa, who allegedly died after a beating from British troops and was under investigation.

During tense Commons exchanges Mr Hoon was asked about the report’s finding about the “routine hooding of prisoners”. He was reminded by Adam Price, Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East, that Edward Heath, when Prime Minister in 1971, promised that the practice, used during the internment of Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland in 1971, would not be used again by the British Army.

An instruction was issued to the Army at that time. Mr Price challenged Mr Hoon to say when the policy had changed. He replied that it had not and the practice in Iraq had now ceased. Mr Hoon’s explanation drew an angry response from the Shadow Defence Secretary, Nicholas Soames, who said that it was further evidence that the Government had “lost its grip”.

“If he did not know about it, he most emphatically should have done and he is unacceptably complacent and negligent in not having done so,” he said.

In Washington, Mr Bush staged a symbolic show of support for Mr Rumsfeld, travelling the three miles from the White House to the Pentagon to stand alongside him. Mr Rumsfeld showed him unpublished pictures of the abuses.

Calls for Mr Rumsfeld to quit moved closer to home when the Army Times, an independent paper with a 250,000 circulation among military families, called for senior heads to roll over the abuse at Abu Ghraib.

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