Iraq update

Seeking asylum

A former United States Marine said his unit killed more than 30 innocent Iraqi civilians in just two days.

The civilians had failed to stop at checkpoints, Marine Sergeant Jimmy Massey told a Canadian tribunal.

He appeared as a witness to bolster claims by fugitive paratrooper Jeremy Hinzman that he walked out on the 82nd Airborne Division to avoid being ordered to commit war crimes in Iraq.

Hinzman, 26, is seeking asylum in Canada, claiming he would face persecution if sent home to the US.

Massey told Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) that men under his command in the 3rd Battalion, Seventh Marines, killed some Iraqi civilians by pumping between 200 and 500 rounds into four separate cars. They had failed to respond to a single warning shot or respond to hand signals at a Baghdad checkpoint.

At the time US soldiers feared suicide bombers would try to ram checkpoints, he said.

Searches found no weapons in the vehicles or evidence that those killed were anything but innocent civilians, said Massey.

He said US Marines also killed four unarmed demonstrators, and more Iraqis the next day during another spell of checkpoint duty in the occupied Iraqi capital.

"I was never clear on who was the enemy and who was not," said Massey. "When you don't know who the enemy is, what are you doing there?" asked the 12-year Marine, later honourably discharged from the service with severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Hinzman earlier argued that he gradually realised after joining the Army in 2001 that he could not bring himself to kill another person.

"I was faced with being deployed to Iraq to do what the infantry does, kill people, and I had no justification for doing so," said Hinzman.

'Transnationals' caught

US troops captured a number of key figures involved in what they described as "transnational terrorism" in Baghdad.

Describing a raid on a sports complex in the east of the capital on Tuesday, the military said yesterday that "several suspected senior level transnational terrorists, including key leaders, operatives, and financiers", had been detained.

It gave no further details.

It was not clear what was meant by "transnational".

US and Iraqi officials say an insurgency among minority Sunni Muslims is being fostered by Islamist fighters from abroad.

They allegedly include Jordanian al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, although the bulk of the guerrilla forces are native Iraqis.

Abuse reports blocked

US special forces accused of abusing prisoners in Iraq threatened Defence Intelligence Agency personnel who saw the mistreatment and once confiscated photos of a prisoner who had been punched in the face, according to US Government memos released by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The special forces also monitored emails sent by Defence personnel and ordered them "not to talk to anyone" in the US about what they saw, said one memo written by the Defence Intelligence Agency chief, who complained to his Pentagon bosses about the harassment.

FBI agents also reported seeing detainees at Abu Ghraib subjected to sleep deprivation, humiliation and forced nudity between October and December 2003 - when the most serious abuses allegedly took place in a scandal that's remains under investigation.

Death toll demand

British diplomats and peers joined scientists and churchmen to urge Prime Minister Tony Blair to publish a death toll in Iraq.

In an unusual open letter to the Prime Minister, the 44 signatories said Blair had rejected other death counts from the war - figures span 14,000 to 100,000 - without releasing one of his own.

The group urged Blair to commission an urgent probe into the number of dead and injured and keep counting so long as British soldiers remained in Iraq alongside their American allies.

Saddam helper arrested

Dutch authorities have arrested a man on suspicion of helping former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein commit war crimes and genocide by supplying him with materials for chemical weapons used in the 1980s.

Prosecutors said the 62-year-old man was arrested on Tuesday as he prepared to leave the Netherlands.

"The man is suspected of supplying thousands of tonnes of raw materials for chemical weapons between 1984 and 1988," Dutch prosecutors said.

Iraq used the weapons in the 1980-1988 war against Iran and in the notorious attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988, in which an estimated 5000 people were killed.

- AGENCIES