BAGHDAD, May 19 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Three Iraqis working for Reuters said they suffered sexual abuse and religious taunts by U.S. forces who detained them last January near Fallujah.

Another compatriot reporting for the American NBC News network said he was struck and kicked several times by the occupation forces.

Reuters reported on Tuesday, May 18, that the three men said they had been forced to insert fingers into their anuses and then lick them, and that they had been forced to put shoes in their mouths, a particularly humiliating act in the Arabic culture.

They had been also forced to make demeaning gestures as the American soldiers laughed, taunted them and took photographs, the news agency said.

The American soldiers, the all three complained, had deprived them of sleep, placed bags over their heads, kicked and hit them, forced them to remain in uncomfortable positions for long periods, and told them they would be sent to the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo.

The three reporters decided to make their ordeal public after the U.S. military claimed there was no evidence of their abuse, and following the exposure of similar mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, the New York Times said on Wednesday, May 19.

"When I saw the Abu Ghraib photographs, I wept," said Salem Ureibi, a cameraman based in Baghdad and one of the three staffers.

"I saw they had suffered like we had."

Ureibi said soldiers had told him they wanted to have sex with him, asserting he had been afraid of being raped.

Ureibi and his two Reuters colleagues - Ahmad Muhammad Hussein al-Badrani, a freelance television journalist based in Fallujah and Sattar Jabar al-Badrani, a driver - said they were detained January 2 while covering the downing of an American helicopter near the western Baghdad city.

All three said they were held for three days, first near Fallujah at Forward Operating Base Volturno, where the abuse happened, said the Times.

A reporter working on contract with NBC News, Ali Muhammad Hussein Ali al-Badrani, was also detained along with the Reuters employees, the American network said.

A hood had been placed over his head for hours, that he had been forced to perform physically debilitating exercises, added the network.

The reporter had been prevented from sleeping and struck and kicked several times, it complained.

"Despite repeated requests, we have yet to receive the results of the army investigation," the Times quoted NBC News Vice President Bill Wheatley as saying.

The U.S. military has denied the men's accusations.

A report issued by the military before the abuse at Abu Ghraib became public said an investigation by the Army's 82nd Airborne Division had found no evidence that the Reuters staff had been tortured or abused, said the Times.

The Pentagon has yet to respond to a request by the global managing editor for Reuters, David Schlesinger, to review the military's findings about the incident in light of the scandal over the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib.

Aljazeera also said one of its reporters was detained for two months by the occupation forces.

This came as the first American soldier charged over the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, Specialist Jeremy Sivits, pleaded guilty at a court martial in Baghdad Wednesday.

Sivits, 24, admitted conspiracy to maltreat detainees, maltreatment of detainees and dereliction of duty around November 8 last year.