The Times, 28 November 2003

Captured Iraq general dies under questioning

By Our Foreign Staff

A FORMER Iraqi general has died while under interrogation, the US military said yesterday.

Abed Hamed Mowhoush, a Republican Guard air defence major-general captured in a raid in October near the Syrian boarder, was being questioned on Wednesday when he lost consciousness after complaining that he did not feel well, the military said.

He was pronounced dead by a US Army doctor.  The cause of death and interrogation techniques are under investigation, but General Mowhoush was not hooded during questioning, the 82nd Airborne said.

An extra 3,000 US Marines are being sent to Iraq by the Pentagon and a growing number of intelligence experts and linguists from 1,600-strong US team sent to search for illicit weapons have been reassigned to the hunt for insurgents.

Signalling that seeking out insurgents has become more urgent than the search for illegal weapons, members of the Iraqi Survey Group have been told "to broaden their perspective and not to stay so focused on weapons that they miss the counter-insurgency stuff", a Pentagon official said.