Peace and Justice Post

When 26-year-old Baha Mousa, a newly widowed father of two, was arrested along with six other Iraqi men by British troops in September 2003, he should have been entitled to be treated with decency and basic humanity in accordance with the British army’s much-boasted sense of fair play.

Tragically, Mousa and his co-detainees came face to face with the brutal reality of the army, as previously experienced by thousands of innocent Catholics interned in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and countless others before and since.

Like them, Mousa was branded a “terrorist” and subjected to horrific violence and sadistic torture.

The seven Iraqis were detained during an army raid on the Ibn al-Haitham hotel where they worked, following reports that weapons were being kept there.

The soldiers found assault rifles and pistols in a safe. Hotel staff insisted that they were used for security, but Mousa and several of his colleagues were taken to the British military base at Darul Dhyafa.

The Iraqi captives were hooded, bound, held in stress positions and deprived of sleep, kicked and beaten – in Mousa’s case, fatally.

So-called “conditioning methods” of this type were banned by the Geneva Convention, the Laws of Armed Combat, a 1972 government inquiry into interrogation in Northern Ireland and the Human Rights Act 1998.

Yet on the evidence of this case and many others in recent years, these techniques would appear to still be widely used by the British army with, it is argued, at least the tacit approval of the government.

When Mousa’s body was put before his stunned and grieving father for identification, it was found that he had suffered 93 separate injuries, including fractured ribs and a broken nose.

Mousa’s father, a colonel in the Iraqi police, had last seen his son alive lying on the floor of the lobby of the hotel, his hands behind his head.

He had reassured his son after a British officer, who called himself Lieutenant Mike, told him that it was a routine investigation which would be over in a couple of hours.

Three days later, Colonel Daoud Mousa was visited by military policemen who told him his son had died in custody.

The next time he saw him was on a slab, his face so battered and bruised that he was barely recognisable to the man who had known and loved him all his life.

At a High Court hearing in 2004, Col Mousa described his horror at the state of his son’s body.

“I was asked to accompany them to identify the corpse,” he said.

“When I saw the corpse I burst into tears and I still cannot bear to think about what I saw. Every time I tell this story I break down.”

One of those who survived the brutal detention described what happened.

“They were kick-boxing us in the chest and between the legs and in the back. We were crying and screaming,” he said.

“They set on Baha especially and he kept crying that he couldn’t breath in the hood. He kept asking them to take the bag off and said he was suffocating.

“But they laughed at him and kicked him more. One of them said: ‘Stop screaming and you will be able to breathe more easily’.”

It has previously been reported that the soldiers gave the detainees the names of footballers as they repeatedly kicked them.

As with countless other cases, the military initially attempted to brush the death under the carpet and, in a move which added insult to injury, offered the Mousa family a paltry £3,000 in exchange for Mousa’s life.

Seven soldiers faced a court martial at Bulford Camp in Wiltshire on war crimes charges relating to the receptionist’s death.

All but one were cleared on all counts in March 2007.

The Ministry of Defence eventually agreed in July last year to pay £2.83 million in compensation to the families of Mousa and a number of other Iraqi men mistreated by British troops.

The public inquiry, due to begin today, will not only look into Mousa’s death and the mistreatment of a number of others but it will also look at the continued use of torture by the British army.

This is not a one-off case. Nor is it even exceptional.

The Ministry of Defence has been forced to concede an inquiry into the alleged torture and murder of 20 Iraqis and mistreatment of a number of others at Camp Abu Naji in 2004.

Phil Shiner, the solicitor for Col Mousa and all the victims in the Baha Mousa inquiry said: “What happened in this incident must never happen again. This inquiry starts hot on the heels of the government agreeing to a second major inquiry into the events of Camp Abu Naji on May 14-15 2004.

“The Baha Mousa inquiry has a golden opportunity to ensure that the techniques banned from Northern Ireland in 1971 can never be used again by the UK and to expose the systemic failings that allowed this to happen.

“The second inquiry shortly to be announced needs to be into the human rights violations while the UK detained the Iraqis. There are simply too many incidents for the government to consider fighting each one on a case-by-case basis.”

The inquiry, chaired by Sir William Gage, will also look at the historic use of torture and interrogation by British forces, including those used during internment in 1971 in Northern Ireland which were banned by the European Court of Human Rights as “cruel and unusual punishment.”

The inquiry has been divided into four “modules” which will deal in turn with the history of conditioning techniques used by British troops while questioning prisoners from Northern Ireland in the early 1970s to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, what happened to Baha Mousa and other Iraqi detainees, training and the chain of command, what has happened since 2003 and any recommendations for the future.