MILITARY police are questioning a soldier at a secret location following his arrest in connection with fake photographs showing British troop abusing an Iraqi prisoner.

The soldier is being held at a barracks in Bulford, Wiltshire according to the Ministry of Defence.

An MOD spokeman said the investigation by The Special Investigation Branch was ongoing.

"Questioning has started with a male soldier that was arrested but no charges have been brought," she said. "We do not know who this person is as the Royal Military Police are acting independently."

Now the military police have a maximum of 90 hours to hold the man before deciding to charge or release him.

If charges are brought, the Army Prosecuting Authority, the military equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service, will take reponsibilty for the case.

The arrest is the latest in the storm over the hoax pictures published in the Daily Mirror newspaper on May 1.

It threw the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, which has its headquarters at Fulwood Barracks, and the Lancashire and Cumbrian Volunteers TA unit, based at Kimberley Barracks, into the limelight amid accusations that soldiers from these regiments were involved.

Colonel David Black hit out at a press conference last Friday, and condemned the photographs as a "recruiting poster for groups such as Al-Quaeda". He also demanded a front page apology from the Daily Mirror and said: "It's time that the ego of one editor is measured against the life of a soldier."

Mirror editor Piers Morgan was sacked just hours later following a meeting of the Trinity Mirror board and the newspaper made a front-page apology to the regiment with the headline Sorry we were Hoaxed.

The Ministry of Defence would not confirm whether or not pictures were taken at Kimberley Barracks in Deepdale Road, Preston, although it is believed the vehicle pictured was from there.

American soldier, specialist Jeremy Sivits, was found guilty on Wednesday, at a trial in Baghdad, of the maltreatment of detainees and failure to protect detainees from maltreatment after he took pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated at Abu Ghraib prison.

He is the the first of seven to face courts martial and was given the maximum sentence of one year's imprisonment, a reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge.