UK inquiry shown photos of Iraq torture
2013-03-04 17:51
London - A public inquiry in London into allegations that
British soldiers killed, mutilated and tortured Iraqi detainees after a battle
in southern Iraq was shown gruesome photographs of bloodied corpses on Monday.
The Al-Sweady Inquiry, ordered by the British government
in 2009 to get to the bottom of disputed events in the aftermath of the battle
of Danny Boy on 14 May 2004, began oral hearings after three years of exhaustive
detective work.
The allegations are that soldiers captured a number of
Iraqis during fighting near the Danny Boy checkpoint, about 5km from the town
of Majar al-Kabir, and took them to the Camp Abu Naji base, where some were
murdered and others tortured.
The military denies any unlawful killings or
ill-treatment in the aftermath of the battle.
A decade after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the issues of
why the British military got involved and how the war was conducted are still
hotly debated in Britain.
The Al-Sweady Inquiry, which has already cost $22.5m in
its pre-hearings phase, is likely to embarrass the military and stir up the
public debate.
On the first morning of hearings, the inquiry heard a
summary of the death certificates of more than 20 people whose bodies were
handed over to the local population near the gates of Camp Abu Naji on 15 May
2004.
According to the certificates, three of the bodies bore
signs of torture including missing eyes, a missing penis and crushed bones.
The inquiry was then shown graphic photographs of dead
bodies with bloody wounds. One of them showed a man with a metal watch around
his wrist and his hand missing.
Several were almost completely disfigured.
There is no agreement about the exact number or
identities of the dead and whether they died fighting at Danny Boy or in
detention at Camp Abu Naji. The inquiry says it aims to establish the
circumstances of 28 deaths.
Bodies carried away
The Al-Sweady hearings are expected to last about a year.
Sixty Iraqi witnesses will give evidence over the course
of several months, either in London or via video-link from the British embassy
in Beirut, and about 200 British military witnesses will follow over several
more months.
Events after the battle of Danny Boy were unusual in that
all bodies would normally have been left on the battlefield.
In this case, an order was given to identify the dead to
see if they included the main suspect in the murder of six British soldiers at
Majar al-Kabir in June 2003.
The military say that was why 20 bodies were carried away
from Danny Boy to Camp Abu Naji.
Nine prisoners were also taken to the camp, and later to
another detention facility at Shaibah Logistics Base, and finally handed over
to Iraqi authorities on 23 September 2004.
Five of those nine detainees later alleged that they had
been tortured in detention.
The inquiry is named after Hamid Al-Sweady, one of those
allegedly murdered at the camp.
If the inquiry, which is expected to publish its report
by the end of 2014, confirms the allegations, the events after the battle of
Danny Boy will go on the record as one of the worst atrocities of the war.
Al-Sweady is the second major British public inquiry into
military conduct in Iraq.
The first, into the death of 26-year-old hotel
receptionist Baha Mousa in British custody in Basra in 2003, reported in 2011
that he had died after suffering "an appalling episode of serious
gratuitous violence" at the hands of British troops.
