BAGHDAD -- Relatives of six detainees from Anbar province were planning a homecoming this week. Instead, they spent Thursday holding funerals and calling on the Iraqi government to account for their deaths.

The men suffocated last week while being transported between detention facilities in sealed vehicles, officials said. They arrived back in Anbar in coffins, their bodies bearing bruises and burn marks from electric shocks, relatives of two of them said.

The case shocked Iraqi and American officials at a time when the United States is releasing or transferring to Iraqi custody the few detainees it still holds and as the country's justice system struggles to overcome a burden of corruption.

The six men were among more than 100 inmates transferred to Baghdad from a Justice Ministry prison just north of the city, and a panel was to review their cases, Justice Minister Dara Noor al-Din said.

Din said the men were in two vehicles with no ventilation or air conditioning. A U.S. official briefed on the case said they were in the trailer of a truck. They were transported at noon, at the height of the day's heat, and were under the supervision of the Defense Ministry. The Justice Ministry is investigating, Din said.

Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi said in a statement that the deaths constituted "murder" and demanded that the oversight of detention facilities be reviewed.

The deaths sparked outrage in Anbar, a predominantly Sunni western province, where residents accused the Shiite-led national government of callousness -- and some threatened to attack security forces in revenge.

The incident occurred during a period of tension and violence after the March elections. Results have not been ratified, and many Sunni Arabs worry that a tentative alliance between two Shiite political groups will shut out their candidate, Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, and his bloc from the next government.

Salah Ja'ata, one of the men who suffocated, called his eldest son the day he died to tell him of his impending transfer and release.

" 'Wait for my call so I can tell you where to get me,' " said Mohammed Salah Ja'ata, 20, recounting his father's words. But the call this week came from the morgue in Baghdad. His father was dead. He had bruises around his neck and on his forehead, nose and right arm, the son said.

Three years ago, he was fighting the Sunni extremist group al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Americans picked him up in his home town of Hit, his son said.

"Is this the reward of those who defend their city?" he asked.

In Fallujah, once the bastion of the Sunni insurgency, hundreds gathered Thursday to mourn Mushtaq Mohammed Talib. U.S. forces detained Talib 22 months ago as he drove in an area where a U.S. vehicle was attacked, his uncle, Jamal Hedi, said. His family also expected his release last week but instead received a body with signs of mistreatment, including burn marks and bruises, Hedi said.

Mohammed Talib, Mushtaq's father, addressed the crowd in the funeral hall.

"I raised him. I watched him get his first teeth, take his first steps and get married," he said as the crowd wept. "They took him from me and they sent him back dead."

The council of the clerics of Fallujah called for a demonstration after Friday prayers and warned of a "return of sectarianism" unless justice is done.

A State Department report released in March said that Iraq's Human Rights Ministry documented nearly 500 cases of torture or ill treatment in the country's prisons last year.

Mukhtar, a special correspondent, reported from Fallujah. Correspondent Ernesto Londoño and special correspondent Jinan Hussein contributed to this report.

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