Iraqi civilians bring abuse claims to the High Court

Dozens of Iraqi civilians are to bring a case before the British courts alleging that they were victims of abuse at the hands of the British army in Iraq and they are suing for punitive damages against the government.

In the first tranche of personal injury claims the victims were detained by the Queen's Lancashire Regiment after they raided a hotel in Basra in September 2003.

The most high-profile case is that of the hotel's receptionist Baha Mousa, 26, who was beaten to death in a temporary detention facility operated by the Army. He suffered 93 separate injuries including fractured ribs and a broken nose. The other nine victims survived their ordeal but were left badly beaten.

Cpl Donald Payne subsequently pleaded guilty to treating Iraqi civilians inhumanely, making him the first member of the British armed forces to admit a war crime.

The more serious charges of manslaughter against Payne and other troops from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment were dropped after a court martial earlier this year.

The second set of cases come from actions said to have taken place at Camp Breadbasket in May 2003 by members of the 1st Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers who captured Iraqis looting.

The Iraqis in question say they were hooded, beaten, forced to simulate oral sex, and suspended from a forklift truck.

Martyn Day, the senior partner at London law firm Leigh Day, acting for the claimants, has said: "There are 10 cases being prepared in relation to Camp Breadbasket and a further 20 claims relating to a variety of allegations of abuse committed by soldiers in other parts of southern Iraq."

The lawyers said they had contacted the Ministry of Defence after the conclusion of the court martial at Bulford Camp when the Army accepted responsibility for the abuse which took place. "We asked the Ministry of Defence to accept liability in these cases and save our clients from the harrowing experience of having to relive their ordeals during a court case in London. We are still waiting to hear back from them on this point," said Mr Day.

Des Brown, the Defence Secretary, has asked to see all the documents relating to the Baha Mousa court martial and has invited the dead man's family and other victims to make representation to his inquiry team.

The 10,000-page transcript that has been released contains the rather startling revelation that officers had been told that "hooding" was legal, despite this being illegal in Britain since it was banned from use during the conflict in Northern Ireland in the seventies.

The descriptions in the transcript of what the British soldiers are alleged to have done makes harrowing reading:

Radif Tahir Muslem Al Hawan, 32, a hotel cashier from Basra.

On the morning of 14 September 2003, Radif Tahir Muslem Al Hawan was sleeping in the hotel office. "I had been asleep for about four hours when I was woken by a soldier shaking me. He was wearing body armour and was carrying a gun. He told me to get dressed and I was taken down to the hotel reception, where I saw 17-20 soldiers."

After accompanying soldiers to the address of someone else they wanted to question, he was taken to a detention centre in Basra. For two days he was beaten and interrogated. "During the evening of the second day I heard Baha Mousa screaming. I was still hooded but it sounded like he was in another room. I heard him scream: 'Please help me, blood is coming out, please help me, I am going to die.' The last thing I heard him say was: 'My nose broke.' After this there was silence."

Joad Kadhim Jaml al-Faeaz, night porter, 46

Joad Kadhim Jaml al-Faeaz, 46, a night porter from Basra, is married with a young, disabled son.

Mr Faeaz was also arrested at the hotel and first taken to American/British POW Camp Bucca near Kuwait before being transferred to a British detention centre in Basra.

"The British soldiers then forced me into a stress position where I had to bend my knees and stretch out my arms in front of me with my back against the wall ... If I dropped my arms at any point, the soldiers would punch me all over my upper body and kick me with their boots.

"When I fell to the floor, a soldier would tighten the ties of the hood around my neck and then pull me up by the ties so that I felt strangled and the same process would be repeated ...

"I could sometimes feel three people kicking me together."

The British press have always portrayed the British Army's experience in Northern Ireland as somehow making the Brits more aware of how to treat an occupied populace and have engaged in a patriotic nonsense that Americans are "heavy handed" and that the British Army could never get involved in any Abu Ghraib like situation. The inference from the red tops has always been that Basra is mostly quiet because of this British sense of fair play and that the Yanks probably brought Baghdad upon themselves because of their overuse of force.

It has always been an example of the most patriotic nonsense. It would appear that, with this case, the blindfold is finally going to come off. Although the "few bad apples" defence will no doubt be employed.

It will be interesting to see how far they get with this defence, especially as it is the government itself that is being sued for punitive damages.

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Tags: Iraq war, UK troops, torture