Home > Abuse by UK soldiers in Iraq ’common’
BRIAN BRADY AND MIKE THEODOULOU IN CYPRUS
IT WAS pitch dark when Walid Fayay Mazban drove home through British-controlled southern Iraq late on August 24 last year.
As so often happened amid the confusion still gripping Iraq less than six months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the street lights were not working.
Mazban’s family are convinced this was why he did not see the makeshift roadblock erected by British soldiers near their base in Basra. They also believe that one ’mistake’ cost him his life.
When the 42-year-old drove through the checkpoint, punishment was immediate: the troops opened fire and he was hit several times in the back. It is believed he was dead by the time they got to his car.
After a perfunctory search, the soldiers found nothing suspicious in his vehicle and the incident was written off as a tragic accident. The following month, his family was given around £1,000 as a "humanitarian" payment, although the Ministry of Defence insists the gesture does not signify guilt.
The incident is among a series of cases compiled by Amnesty International as evidence of what it claims is the continuing "abuse" of civilians in Iraq, and the apparent failure of coalition forces to deal with them correctly.
As is often the case with war zone images, a handful of pictures apparently showing British troops abusing an Iraqi detainee have done more damage to the UK’s image than all the reported - but unphotographed - incidents that came before.
At a stroke, the perhaps naive, complacent assumption that UK forces were benign, beret-wearing versions of their trigger-happy American brothers in arms has evaporated.
"It comes as no surprise to us that there are allegations of torture involving British forces in Iraq," said Nicole Choueiry, Amnesty’s Middle East spokeswoman.
"It is true that the Americans are in general involved in more incidents of brutality than the British, but we have discovered a pattern of torture in the British zone as well."
Amnesty estimates more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a direct result of the military intervention in Iraq, and the forces ostensibly attempting to pacify the country do not escape the blame.
The organisation also claims to have evidence of "numerous cases" where British forces "resorted to lethal force and killed Iraqi civilians even though their lives and the lives of others did not appear to be in danger".
In the first eight months of the occupation, some 17 civilians died at the hands of British forces in southern Iraq. The British government has paid out almost £10,000 in compensation to 22 civilians injured at the hands of its forces. The image of British troops winning the "hearts and minds" of the civilian population, has been taking a battering for some time.
Even before the pictures appeared in the Mirror, Amnesty was warning that Iraqis had complained they were being tortured and ill-treated by both US and UK troops during interrogation.
"Methods often reported include prolonged sleep deprivation, beatings, prolonged restraint in painful positions, sometimes combined with exposure to loud music, prolonged hooding and exposure to bright lights," Amnesty says.
In the southern zone, where some 85 prisoners remain under British control, the sudden avalanche of allegations can hardly improve what is becoming an increasingly tense situation on the ground.
Foulath Hadid, an Oxford University academic and former diplomat in close contact with officials in the new Iraqi administration, said he had received several reports of such cases. "I think this has been going on for a while and there are many more Iraqis being humiliated in this way," he said. People who are in the new government tell me of Iraqi men being abused by soldiers in front of their own families.
"The UK government says it is going to investigate this one incident but is it really going to play detective and find all the people who have been abused?"
The Muslim Association of Britain said the images explained why moderate Iraqis were rallying against coalition troops.
Spokesman Anas Altikriti said he had been attempting to highlight abuses by British troops for several months. "I am not surprised by these images because I have heard for months about such things. What surprises me is that someone had the arrogance to photograph what they were doing."
The pictures of soldiers allegedly mistreating an Iraqi prisoner have caused shock and horror within the Cyprus-based regiment involved.
Lieutenant-colonel Jorge Mendonca, the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, was told on Friday evening that the brutality allegations would surface yesterday. "He was devastated," a source in Cyprus - where the regiment has been based since February - told Scotland on Sunday.
Four soldiers from the same regiment are already under investigation for allegedly mistreating prisoners in Iraq. "When the regiment were told the first lot were being investigated, they just didn’t believe it. There’s a general feeling of despondency," the source said.