Police in Australia are to review how they use Taser guns after the death of a man in Queensland who was stunned possibly as much as 28 times by one of the powerful electronic weapons.

Antonio Galeano, 39, an amphetamines addict, collapsed and died 15 minutes after being stunned by a 50,000-volt Taser gun during a confrontation with police in Brandon, near Townsville in far north Queensland last Friday.

Police said initially that he had been shot three times, but data recorded on the Taser gun has shown that it was triggered 28 times. It is unknown if Mr Galeano was hit by all of the electric shock bursts.

Mr Galeano had gone on a naked rampage just days after being released from a psychiatric hospital. According to police, he was threatening to harm himself and officers so they tried to use capsicum spray on him.

When that had no apparent effect they Tasered the man, who collapsed and died while still in handcuffs.

Ian Stewart , the Queensland Police deputy commissioner, said that police were investigating whether the gun used in Friday’s incident was faulty.

He said that police had no guidelines on how many times a Taser could be fired in one incident, and a joint Crime and Misconduct Commission and police ethical standards command investigation will look into whether there needed to be a cap on numbers of firings.

"The review has three main elements: we are going to look at our policies in the use of the Tasers; we are going to look at the training we provide our officers' and we are looking at the monitoring of the use of Tasers by the police service,” Mr Stewart said.

Assistant Commissioner Peter Martin, from the Ethical Standards Command, said police were talking to Taser International, the USA-based manufacturer. The ethics investigation was also looking at how many Tasers were at the incident involving Mr Galeano and which were activated.

Tasers use a powerful electric current to incapacitate people, with the charge temporarily disrupting muscle control. Critics say that the weapon can cause injury, including severe heart attack in some people, possibly leading to death. Tasers have been blamed for hundreds of deaths in more than a million official incidents worldwide.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission in Britain has begun an inquiry into an incident in the early hours of Monday when police were captured on camera using a Taser gun repeatedly to stun a man in Nottingham.

The Australian incident has flamed debate about the use of Tasers. "It explodes the myth that the Queensland Police Service has put out there for the last couple of years that Tasers are harmless," Terry O'Gorman, from the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, told a local radio station.

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