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Ex-detenus allege macabre torture

Washington: Two Iraqi businessmen, who were imprisoned by U.S. forces, alleged that American soldiers threw them into a cage of lions in a Baghdad palace as part of a terrifying torture ritual during 2003. ``They took me behind the cage, they were screaming at me, scaring me and beating me a lot,'' Thahe Mohammed Sabbar told the Associated Press in an interview on Monday.

``One of the soldiers would open the door, and two soldiers would push me in. The lions came running toward me and they pulled me out and shut the door. I completely lost consciousness.''

Sitting in a Washington hotel room and speaking through an interpreter, Sabbar described the scene, motioning with his hands to show how he was pushed into the cage, then pulled back out just as the lions advanced.

Army spokesman Paul Boyce said he has never heard of lions being used in any detenu operations and it has never come up in any of the investigations into detenu abuse allegations conducted by the military over the past three years. — AP

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