Washington: A Pentagon review has turned up several dozen videotapes of detainee interrogations, including one that shows a detainee having his mouth duct-taped to stop him from chanting, US defense officials said today.

Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence James Clapper ordered the review of the military's videotape practices in late January after revelations that the CIA had destroyed videotapes of interrogations of two high value prisoners.

"What we have found is that there is not widespread use of videotaping," said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary.

But military units that have used videotapes to record interrogations have orders to destroy them withn 90 days "unless there a reason to maintain it," said another Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman.

"And obviously if there were any sign of abuse, that would be a reason to maintain it," Morrell added. "We have seen nothing, nothing that would suggest there was any abuse going on."

Morrell said "fewer than 50" videotapes had been identified so far in the course of the review, almost all of them video-tapes related to interrogations of terrorism suspects Jose Padilla and Ali al-Mari at the Navy Brig in Charleston, South Carolina.

A spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency acknowledged that one of the videotapes showed interrogators duct-taping al-Marri s mouth shut.

"His mouth was taped. He had been chanting very loudly, disrupting the interrogation. He was asked to stop and was told that if he didn't stop his loud chanting, then his mouth would be taped," said spokesman Don Black.

Source : PTI