Danish PM demands answers on Iraq torture documents

AFP, Copenhagen, Oct 26, 2010  – Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said Tuesday he had ordered the country’s defence ministry to provide a full report on allegations Danish troops handed Iraqi insurgents over for torture.
Confidential documents published on Friday by whistleblowing website Wikileaks showed that Danish troops deployed in Iraq from 2003 to 2007 handed over 62 prisoners to Iraqi police, despite knowing that they risked mistreatment and torture.
’I take these allegations very seriously and I only have one interest: to shine all light on this matter as quickly as possible,’ he said.
Rasmussen said he had ordered Defence Minister Gitte Lillelund Bech to make a detailed report to parliament, which was necessary given the gravity of the case.
The centre-right leader rejected an Opposition call for an independent inquiry, saying ’it would take too much time’.
The defence minister later said Denmark ’must of course respect international law and the treatment of prisoners’.
’Our adversaries do not do that but we must not fall into that trap,’ she said on the TV2 television network.
She warned of consequences if some in Denmark broke international conventions.
A former soldier told television channel DR that Danish soldiers had delivered prisoners to Iraqi police in Basra, and they learned they had subsequently been tortured and in some cases killed.
Another former soldier said he had seen the body of a former Danish prisoner with his fingers cut off two days after he was handed over.
’Everybody knew perfectly well that prisoners handed over to Iraqi authorities were being tortured,’ the soldier told tabloid Ekstra Bladet.
On Sunday the Danish army said it would analyse the documents published by Wikileaks.
The website released 400,000 classified documents, which recount widespread torture in Iraqi prisons and purport to show 15,000 more civilian deaths than the previously disclosed figure of about 50,000.
Around 500 Danish troops were stationed in the southern Iraqi city under British command until their withdrawal in 2007.