BBC Slams Iraqi Abuse Whitewash
BBC report documents the horrific treatment of Iraqi detainees
A BBC Panorama investigation into the violent death of Baha Mousa at the hands of British soldiers has accused the British Army of a far-reaching cover-up.
A BBC Panorama report into the death of Baha Mousa in Iraq in 2003 has accused the British Army and Ministry of Defence of a cover-up and criticised the judicial process which failed to bring those soldiers involved to justice.
The report, entitled ‘A Good Kicking’, was aired in Britain on 13 March 2007, and documented the harrowing sequence of events that led toMousa’s death and the catalogue of injustices that followed it.
Mousa, an Iraqi hotel receptionist, was one of seven Iraqi civilians arrested by a unit of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment led by Lieutenant Craig Rodgers, after the soldiers raided the Ibn Al Haitham hotel at dawn on 14 September 2003.
The surviving hotel workers say that once the soldiers discovered a small selection of weapons and ammunition, which the men kept for hotel security, they became aggressive, abusive and violent. One of the arrested men, Kifah Mousa, who the British men nicknamed ‘grandad’, told Panorama: "They started torturing us before they posed any questions. Basically they were kick boxing us and looked to be really enjoying it."
The men were taken to a remote prison cell and held. Four days after being moved there, Baha Mousa, 26, was dead – he was left with 93 injuries on his body, including a badly broken nose and severe bruising. The documentary showed how the men were subjected to 24-hour physical abuse, with witnesses from within the Army coming forward to corroborate the claims of the Iraqi victims.
One such Army whistle-blower said: "What I saw in that cell wasn't interrogation. It wasn't detention. It was torture as far as I am concerned. It was brutal. It was barbaric."
Rodgers, who has now been made a captain and put in charge of training British troops for service in Iraq and Afghanistan, led night interrogations of the prisoners, alternating with the jailer in charge of the detainees during the day, Corporal Donald Payne.
Payne has since pleaded guilty to and been charged with inhumane treatment. He is the only man to have been charged in connection with the incident and is awaiting sentencing. Payne is the first member of the British armed forces to plead guilty to a war crime. Payne’s lawyer told Panorama of the astounding mass-denial of those also accused, and commented on what he considered an unprecedented display of collective memory loss from the soldiers while under oath.
Meanwhile, an anonymous former investigator with the Ministry of Defence’s own Special Investigations Branch told of the Army’s typically duplicitous approach to internal scrutiny, and described the investigation, which is reported to have cost the British taxpayer £20 million, as "appalling".
Phil Shiner, a lawyer for the victims, said: "It's soldiers investigating soldiers and then papers are sent up to soldiers who decide who should and shouldn't be prosecuted. It's a cover up. It's a travesty. The military system hasn't got close to establishing what went wrong."
More information on BBC Panorama documentaries, including ‘A Good Kicking’, can be found here.
