The Hungarian contingent in Iraq lost its first soldier in an explosion south of Baghdad, Defence Minister Ferenc Juhasz said.
"Today a 47-member convoy departed from the Hungarian base of Hilla towards a Ukranian base when it came under attack and a 27-year-old Hungarian soldier died a hero's death," Juhasz said.
"An explosive device went off just next to the Hungarian convoy," he added.
Juhasz added the convoy was carrying water to the Ukranian base when they came under attack at As-Suwayrah, some 70 kilometers southeast of the Iraqi capital.
Hungary deployed 300 troops, mostly logistics experts, in Iraq in September 2003 with a parliamentary mandate to stay there until the end of 2004.
On Thursday, Juhasz told journalists Hungary's troops would stay in Iraq until the end of the year unless, "parliament decides otherwise."
The defence minister said he would travel to Iraq next week and members of a special Hungarian commission assembled to investigate Thursday's attack would leave for Iraq on Friday.
In the meantime, in what seems to be a rare admission of violating the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war, the Pentagon has acknowledged it improperly held an Iraqi prisoner in secret for over seven months.
The military has held the man in Iraq since October without assigning him a prisoner number or notifying the International Committee of the Red Cross that he is a prisoner, Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Wednesday night.
Both assigning a prisoner number and notifying the Red Cross are required under the Geneva Conventions, which the Bush administration acknowledges apply to the conflict in Iraq.
The prisoner will be given a number and the Red Cross will be formally notified soon, Whitman said.
"The ICRC should have been notified about the detainee earlier," Whitman conveyed. "We should have taken steps, and we have taken the necessary steps to rectify the situation."
The Pentagon’s admission came a day before a human rights group released a report accusing Washington of keeping an unknown number of "terrorist suspects" in secret lockups around the world.
A report from NY-based Human Rights First said the Bush administration was violating US and international law by refusing to notify all detainees’ families or give names, numbers and locations of all "terror" war prisoners to the Red Cross.
None of that was done in the Iraqi detainee’s case, Whitman stated.
"The official secrecy surrounding US practices has made conditions ripe for illegality and abuse," said the report from Human Rights First.
The group said the United States should immediately allow Red Cross access to all "terror" war detainees, notify the prisoners’ families and announce the number and location of such prisoners.
The Iraqi prisoner is thus far the only individual Defense Department officials have acknowledged shielding from the Red Cross.
The secret prisoner in Iraq is believed to be a high-level member of Ansar al-Islam, a group which had been based in northern Iraq before the US invasion last year. US officials believe the man was involved in attacks on occupation troops, Whitman said.
The CIA asked the military to take custody of the man in October and asked that he not be given a prisoner number or disclosed to the Red Cross while officials determined his status, Whitman said. (Albawaba.com)
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
