Report: U.S. Troops Beat Civilians

The Army is preparing to publicly release an investigative report saying several members of the 82nd Airborne Division on peacekeeping duty in Kosovo beat, threatened and assaulted civilians, officials said.

The formerly classified report also raises questions about the kinds of training these men received in preparation for peacekeeping duty, the officials said Friday. They discussed the matter on condition they not be identified.

The central conclusions of the investigative report were publicly disclosed during the trial in Germany of Staff Sgt. Frank Ronghi, who was sentenced in August to life in prison with no chance for parole for the murder, sodomy and rape of an 11-year-old Kosovo Albanian girl.

ABC News reported Friday that it obtained a copy of the investigative report.

The most sensational conclusion of the report — that several members of Ronghi's platoon in the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment beat, threatened and illegally detained civilians in Kosovo — was publicly disclosed by government attorneys in the Ronghi trial.

These acts were accepted as fact by both the prosecution and the defense, but the report itself was not made public because it contained classified information.

The Army has removed the classified material and will release a redacted copy of the report Monday, officials said.

The men accused of the misbehavior were punished — though not jailed — earlier this year. They are based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Among the actions they were accused of: an American lieutenant and a noncommissioned officer, along with Ronghi, took two Albanian brothers to an abandoned warehouse and punched them in the stomach. The lieutenant held a gun to the back of one of the brother's head and asked him if he wanted to die.

Seven thousand American personnel remain in Kosovo as part of KFOR. The situation there is still violent. On Friday alone in Kosovo, one man was killed and another wounded by gunfire, one man was arrested for possessing a gun, and another man's legs were wounded by a booby trap.