Washington ? The claim by two former Iraqi detainees that they were thrust into a cage of lions in a Baghdad palace in 2003 as part of a terrifying interrogation “seems quite farfetched,” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Army is looking into the charges, which were made Monday during an interview.

“They took me behind the cage, they were screaming at me, scaring me and beating me a lot,” Thahe Mohammed Sabbar said. “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.”

Army spokesman Paul Boyce said Tuesday there is no formal investigation. Defense officials suggested that at times detainees make up claims of abuse. Boyce and Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said they have never heard of lions being used in any detainee operations.

“Everything that everyone alleges is looked into,” said Rumsfeld, but he added that documents have been found that “train people, terrorists, to lie about their treatment, and they do it consistently and it works.”

Boyce said no mention of lions has never come up in any of the more than 400 investigations into detainee abuse conducted by the military over the past three years.

“We take every allegation of detainee abuse seriously,” Boyce said. “But it does seem unusual that this is now coming out for the very first time after three years of investigations.”

Sabbar, 37, and Sherzad Kamal Khalid, 35, are in the United States this week to talk about the lawsuit that the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First filed on their behalf against Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other military officials.

The suit, which was filed in March and transferred to U.S. District Court in Washington, details alleged sexual abuse, mock executions, water and food deprivation, electric shock and other torture used on eight detainees, including Sabbar and Khalid. It does not mention the lion cage.