UK soldiers cleared of killing and torturing Iraqi prisoners

LONDON // British soldiers have been cleared of both torturing and killing Iraqi prisoners after a 2004 battle in southern Iraq that left 28 insurgents dead.

A five-year inquiry by Thayne Forbes, a retired judge, found that some of the interrogation techniques used on the nine prisoners taken after the battle “amounted to a form of ill-treatment,” but not torture.

One technique involved leaving the subject blindfolded while banging a tent peg on a desk to make a frightening sound, and blowing on the back of his neck.

Prisoners were also kept awake before interrogation, unnecessarily blindfolded and subjected to excessively harsh questioning.

Mr Forbes also criticised soldiers for posing with their prisoners at the end of the battle for what he described as “singularly tasteless” photos that had been taken as “trophies.”

The inquiry was ordered by Britain’s previous Labour government in 2009 after five of the prisoners and the relatives of one of those who died in the battle, Hamid Al Sweady, sued UK authorities.

They alleged that Al Sweady was murdered after being taken prisoner.

But Mr Forbes rejected that allegation in a report published on Wednesday.

“There were some instances of ill-treatment by the British military, but these were relatively minor when compared with the original very serious allegations,” Mr Forbes said.

All the most serious allegations, he went on, “have been found to be wholly without foundation and entirely the product of deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hostility.”

The Battle of Danny Boy, on May 14, 2004, began when Iraqi insurgents ambushed vehicles from the British Army’s Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders regiment, outside the small town of Al Majar Al Kabir, between Basra and Al Amarah.

Army reinforcements arrived and a “fierce” firefight left 28 Iraqis dead and “a small number” of British soldiers wounded.

Usually, the Iraqi dead would have been left on the battlefield, but because the British believed that a leading insurgent might be among them, the soldiers were ordered to get pictures of those who had been killed. As it made its way down the chain of command, this order became one to retrieve the corpses, and so 20 bodies were taken back to the British base.

When these bodies were handed over to Iraqi authorities the next day, a rumour spread that they had been tortured and killed after capture. This idea was exacerbated because of the way the corpses had been manhandled. At points in the return journey following the battle, soldiers stood on the bodies in their vehicles while they were under fire.

Mr Forbes said this decision “had both immediate and long-term consequences.”

“It left the British forces very exposed to allegations that Iraqi men had been murdered, tortured and mutilated,” he said. “This was a consequence which, although not foreseen at the time, turned out to be of great importance in causing the proliferation and provision of apparent substance to the rapidly disseminated rumours.”

The former judge also concluded that medical staff who examined and treated the men taken prisoner, missed the seriousness of some of their wounds.

* Bloomberg