Geneva ? Up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested “by mistake,” according to coalition intelligence officers cited in a Red Cross report disclosed Monday. It also said U.S. officers mistreated inmates at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison by keeping them naked in dark, empty cells.

Abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers was widespread and routine, the report finds — contrary to President Bush’s contention that the mistreatment “was the wrongdoing of a few.”

While many detainees were quickly released, high-ranking officials in Saddam Hussein’s government, including those listed on the U.S. military’s deck of “most wanted” cards, were held for months in solitary confinement.

Red Cross delegates saw U.S. military intelligence officers mistreating prisoners under interrogation at Abu Ghraib and collected allegations of abuse at more than 10 other detention facilities, including the military intelligence section at Camp Cropper at Baghdad International Airport and the Tikrit holding area, according to the report.

The 24-page document cites abuses — some “tantamount to torture” — including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of “imminent execution.”

“These methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information and other forms of cooperation from persons who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an ‘intelligence value,'” the report said.

Solitary confinement

High-ranking officials were singled out for special treatment, according to the report, which the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed as authentic after it was published Monday by The Wall Street Journal.

“Since June 2003 over a hundred ‘high value detainees’ have been held for nearly 23 hours a day in strict solitary confinement in small concrete cells devoid of daylight,” the report said. “Their continued internment several months after their arrest in strict solitary confinement constituted a serious violation of the third and fourth Geneva Conventions.”

It did not say who the detainees were, but an official who discussed the report with the Red Cross said they included some of the 55 top officials in Saddam’s regime named in the deck of cards given to troops.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said detainees held at Baghdad International Airport included many of the 44 “deck of cards” suspects already captured. It was not clear whether Saddam was at the airport, but the Red Cross has said it visited him last month in coalition detention somewhere in Iraq.

‘Arrested by mistake’

The report said some coalition military intelligence officers estimated that “between 70 percent and 90 percent” of the detainees in Iraq “had been arrested by mistake. They also attributed the brutality of some arrests to the lack of proper supervision of battle group units.”

It was unclear what the Red Cross meant by “mistake.” However, many Iraqis have claimed U.S. forces arrested them because of misunderstandings, bogus claims by personal enemies, mistaken identity or simply for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Language problems sometimes led to detainees’ “being slapped, roughed up, pushed around or pushed to the ground,” according to the Red Cross report. “A failure to understand or a misunderstanding of orders given in English was construed by guards as resistance or disobedience.”

The report said that in coalition prisons “ICRC delegates directly witnessed and documented a variety of methods used to secure the cooperation” of the inmates “with their interrogators.” The delegates saw detainees kept “completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness.”

“Upon witnessing such cases, the ICRC interrupted its visits and requested an explanation from the authorities,” the report said. “The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was ‘part of the process.'”

This apparently meant detainees were progressively given clothing, bedding, lighting and other items in exchange for cooperation, it said.