The US military has found a total of 94 cases of confirmed or alleged abuse of prisoners by American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan since the autumn of 2001.
The army's inspector general made the revelation today in a long-awaited report that was made public at a hastily called Senate hearing.
The Defence Department had refused until now to give a total number of abuse allegations since the prisoner abuse scandal broke this spring. The 94 is significantly higher than all other previous estimates given by Pentagon officials.
The inspector general investigation, ordered after the allegations of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to the attention of top army officials in Washington, concluded that there were no systemic problems that contributed to the abuse. In some cases, the report found, the abuse was abetted or facilitated by officers not following proper procedures.
In contrast to its own findings, however, the army report also cites a February report from the International Committee for the Red Cross that alleged that "methods of ill treatment" were "used in a systematic way" by the US military in Iraq.
The US army inspector general report found that since the autumn of 2001, the United States had held more than 50,000 prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq, a number never before made public.
AP