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The Time magazine report, to hit newsstands Monday, also said that a medic was ordered, by one account, to cover up a homicide inside the jail.

Although the prison just outside Baghdad was jammed with as many as 7,000 detainees -- some of whom displayed serious mental illnesses -- no US doctor was in residence for most of 2003 following the US-led invasion of Iraq.

The report said "with straitjackets unavailable, tethers -- like the leash held by Private Lynndie England -- were put to use at Abu Ghraib to control unruly or mentally disturbed detainees, sometimes with the concurrence of a doctor."

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The report cited National Guard Captain Kelly Parrson, a physician's assistant at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and 2004. Parrson was seriously injured by a mortar during an insurgent attack that targetted the jail.

Parrson told Time there were times when he and other non-physicians carried out amputations and other procedures on inmates that should have been performed by surgeons.

"I took off an ankle and a lower leg," he recalls. "There was no one else, and if it was death or amputation, you just had to do it."

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Auch said neither he nor his medical staff were consulted about an Iraqi, later dubbed "Ice Man," when he was first brought to the prison for interrogation by US military intelligence.

The detainee subsequently died during questioning in the middle of the night under circumstances that have been officially ruled a homicide by the military.

According to statements made during an Army inquiry, military personnel ordered the body put on ice and then spirited it away after medics had attached a fake IV to the dead man's arm in an apparent attempt to create the impression he was still alive.

Auch told Time that he had not been questioned as part of the army's probe into the homicide.

But he told the magazine a medic told him he was ordered by a military intelligence officer to participate in the ruse and to never discuss it.