OFFICIAL reports of torture in US custody in Afghanistan and Iraq and assaults on Afghan civilians by special forces emerged last night in US army files extracted from the military by a civil rights group.

In some cases, the abuse was either not investigated or went unpunished, despite official corroboration of the allegations.

The files were revealed only because a court forced the Government to hand them over after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act. Some of the abuse surfaced after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

The files showed that American troops in Afghanistan had posed for photographs of mock executions with hooded and bound prisoners — images strongly reminiscent of abuse at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. The files suggested that the military had destroyed some materials in an attempt to avoid another public embarrassment following the Abu Ghraib scandal, which broke last April.

Among the documents was a file showing that the Army had investigated a compact disc depicting abuse by American soldiers that was found in Afghanistan last July. The

CD showed soldiers beating prisoners at Fire Base Tycze in southern Afghanistan and holding pistols and rifles to their heads and backs. However, the Government did not release the actual images, the civil liberties union said.

In another file, senior Psychological Operations officers said that they had seen special operations troops assault civilians indiscriminately in two Afghan villages last May. The case was closed because it was considered too dangerous to visit the area to conduct interviews.

The Pentagon has said that the abuse previously reported was the work of a few rogue soldiers. Critics say that the abuse was sanctioned by commanders. “These documents provide more evidence that abuse was not localised or aberrational, but was widespread,” Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer for the civil liberties union, said. “They also provide further evidence that at least in some cases the Government is not aggressively investigating credible allegations.”

An Army spokesman said any soldier who had broken the law would be brought to justice. "Simply put, we are accountable,” Colonel Joe Curtin said. “We take it seriously.”

Other documents seen by the Associated Press reveal that an Iraqi whose corpse was photographed with grinning US soldiers at Abu Ghraib died under CIA interrogation while in a position condemned by human rights groups as torture.

Manadel al-Jamadi was suspended by his wrists, with his hands cuffed behind his back in a “Palestinian hanging”, according to the reports.

The US military said at the time that the death had been ruled a homicide.

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