Iraqis win right to challenge inquiry block

Friday 20 July 2012

by Paddy McGuffin, Home Affairs Reporter

Iraqi civilians who allege extra-judicial killings and torture by British forces have won the right to challenge the government's refusal to hold a public inquiry into the claims.

Mr Justice Silber has granted permission for 169 Iraqi civilians to seek a second judicial review of the decision of the Secretary of State for Defence, Philip Hammond, to investigate their allegations through the "Iraq Historic Allegations Team" (IHAT).

Last November the claimants' representative Public Interest lawyers successfully argued at the Court of Appeal that IHAT was not sufficiently independent, comprising as it does a substantial number of Royal Military Police (RMP). The RMP has itself been intimately involved in detention operations in Iraq.

The appeal court judges ruled that the IHAT inquiries were at best inadequate and at worst "substantially compromised."

They stopped short of ordering a fresh investigation but asked Mr Hammond to look again at how the hundreds of allegations of torture and unlawful killing are investigated.

The allegations concern a number of unlawful killings and a vast number of allegations of abuse surrounding the Joint Forward Interrogation Team (JFIT) which operated throughout British operations in Iraq and interrogated hundreds of civilians.

The claimants allege that they were held in solitary confinement cells and subjected to interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, food and water deprivation, hooding, forced nudity and sexual humiliation.

In March 2012 the Secretary of State announced that the RMP element in IHAT was to be replaced with the Royal Navy Police (RNP). However in a claim lodged on 25 May this year, the claimants argue that the RNP is also not independent as the Royal Navy had numerous officers participating in interrogation operations at the JFIT.

Public Interest Lawyers solicitor Phil Shiner said: "My clients are either relatives of Iraqis unlawfully killed or victims of gross acts of torture and ill-treatment.

"The MoD are making one last desperate effort to avoid accountability and my clients are pleased to have the chance of explaining once again to a court why there must now be an independent inquiry into all these cases."

The Ministry of Defence did not respond to the Star's request for comment.

The claim is to be heard over a three day period in December.

paddym@peoples-press.com

British have covered up hundreds of Iraqi casualties, ex-officer says

By John Byrne

Monday, October 12th, 2009


http://rawstory.com/2009/10/british-have-covered-up-hundreds-of-iraqi-casualties-ex-officer-says/


The British military's chain of command has instructed the country's top investigators not to examine hundreds of incidents involving Iraqi deaths and serious injury, a former British military police officer told the BBC Sunday.

"I've seen documentary evidence that there were incidents running into the hundreds involving death and serious injury to Iraqis where the chain of command of the Army had decided that the circumstances did not warrant a Royal Military Police investigation," the former British Army officer, whose face was obscured, told a BBC interviewer. "And if you look at the general picture that the media says, Afghanistan seems a lot quieter in terms of alleged misconduct of British troops, that to me is quite concerning, because it tells me that the Army hasn't suddenly gotten a lot better. It tells me that the Royal Military Police are very efficiently toeing the party line for the Army."

The BBC interview has received scant attention, meriting only a brief mention in the UK Guardian and little coverage by outlets cataloged in Google News. Video of the interview is available here.

"It is an extremely dark and sorry situation," the officer added. "I think that the vast majority of soldiers have served the country well and with distinction. It is the actions of a few that have been shown to be bad apples. But it is very fair to say that because the system is so structurally flawed, and some of the decision making has been so perverse, that I is fair to say that the barrel is probably rotten."

The Royal Military Police is charged with policing military personnel, service property and military operations.

In the interview, the officer said that he and others had brought their concerns to the military, but that few come forward because of the consequences to their careers. He didn't specifically spell out what the incidents that weren't investigated entailed.

"As soon as you raise concerns... life can be very easily made very difficult for anybody not toeing the party line," he said. "It's well known that if you don't toe the official party line... you won't get promoted."

Part of the problem, the officer suggested, was likely due to the fact that the police weren't used to such a magnitude of serious inquiries.

"The Iraq War... catapulted the Royal Military Police onto the world stage and took them out of a comfort zone where they'd previously be investigating quite routine lower level type crimes to investigating very serious allegations of alleged torture and murder," he remarked. "And if you look back at all the serious allegations arising out of all the operations in Iraq there's a catalog of blunders, mistakes, ineptitutde and the course of investigations being bent to serve the real or perceived interests of the chain of command of the army."

The military can stymie investigations without directly covering them up, he said -- pointing out that because the conflict zones remain dangerous, investigators need only be denied access to the scene.

"If its a hot operation environment," the officer said, "the chain of command can deny the use of helicopters, they can deny protection for the investigators to go to scenes... They can make it very difficult."
"I would say that it is definitely the case that the public and indeed international partners do not have any trust and confidence in the investigation of incidents involving alleged misconduct by British troops," he added.

The full video of the interview is available here.

British crimes in Iraq: The Story of Baha Mousa, by Robert Fisk

Baha Mousa and his family

'He was a decent guy. They didn't need to do that'

Iraqi inquiry sees video of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by british soldiers


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8146614.stm
Video footage of his detention was shown to the jury

A video of a British soldier screaming abuse at hooded prisoners in Iraq has been played at a public inquiry into the death of an Iraqi civilian.

Sunday, 12 July 2009

I first heard about Baha Mousa from his family. He was working as a hotel receptionist in Basra when British troops surrounded the building and arrested seven men. They were taken to a British barracks, hooded and beaten. Two days later, as his weeping father recalled for me, Mousa was dead. His family was given $3,000 in compensation and rejected a further $5,000. What they wanted was justice. His father had been appointed a police officer by the British authorities themselves. He was wearing two pistols on his hips. He was "our man", and we killed his son.

The outrageous death of his 26-year-old son, arrested in front of his own father, remains one of the most shameful episodes of our occupation of southern Iraq. As they beat the seven men, the British soldiers gave them the names of footballers. I guess it is always easy to demean those who you are going to brutalise. One of his comrades, who worked in the same hotel, and who spoke to me in great pain from his hospital bed, described how Baha had pleaded for his murderers to stop kicking him. "He was a decent guy. They didn't need to do that to him," he said.

When I first heard this story, it reminded me – alas – of all the accounts that I had heard in Northern Ireland, of British Catholics taken from their homes and beaten up in British army barracks, called "terrorist" by those who should have controlled their tormentors. I had heard it all before. Always, but always, those who had been beaten and kicked were always the bad guys.

In Basra, the British like to say that they knew how to treat the locals, that they had learnt from Northern Ireland. Oh, how they had learnt!

I remember sitting in front of Baha Mousa's children – his wife had already died of cancer – and, listening to his father's account, I doubted if justice would be done. It was not. The bad guys got away with it. As they usually did in Northern Ireland. It's not about hearts and minds. It's about justice. And this we do not administer.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-story-of-baha-mousa-1742762.html

It is now impossible to trust any 'official' inquiry into Iraq

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: It is now impossible to trust any 'official' inquiry into Iraq

The Government seems to have institutionalised duplicity
Monday, 30 March 2009

I watched a report on Fallujah last week on Sky News by Lisa Holland for which she deserves our gratitude and a top television award. It featured a quietly spoken Iraqi neo-natal specialist, Dr Muntaha Hashim, who is finding that in that town, bombed and collectively punished by the allies, there has been a massive increase in the number of deformed babies. Dr Hashim sees children with two heads – one, a young girl with bountiful hair was curled up on a bed – and others limbless, or born without vital organs. The number has doubled since the days of Saddam.
Some unidentified chemical weaponry is responsible. Pro-war politicians, dodgy spooks, spin doctors and unrepentant media warriors such as Christopher Hitchens still claim triumphantly the war was a victory of good over evil. Their own offspring will not be born with two heads and, they must believe, Iraqis are paying but a small price for 'freedom'.

We will never know what was done in Fallujah in our name. We will not be told the full truth on the victimisation of civilians in Basra either, nor on the global "renditions" industry, which provides us with information obtained under torture from alleged terrorists, and certainly not on our productive links with some of the world's most diabolical regimes.

In our supposedly free and open democracy we are not even entitled to know the truth about why we went to war in Iraq – a war which made terrorism respectable and convinced millions of Muslims that the West had embarked on a new crusade.

As a good citizen, I make it my business to question MPs and peers who supported the false case made for the Iraq war. I meet with practiced insouciance or unwarranted fury, or that most base of excuses: "I believed what I was told". Contrition hardly makes an appearance. Most do not want to be dragged back to those difficult days. Even Chris Mullin, whose published diaries are delightful, was against the war but succumbed to Blair's charm offensive and voted to prevent an inquiry – a stand I find inexplicable and unforgivable.

The issue of Iraq is the cut on the body politic that seeps and will not heal, as a constant reminder of the wounded country our soldiers leave behind. In a recent BBC poll over 70 per cent of Britons want an open and credible inquiry on it. Millions more want another on the use of torture allegedly sanctioned by the Government.

The attorney general has, to her credit, decided the latter needs to be investigated through the criminal justice system, and we are now given a vague promise of some kind of investigation on Iraq, probably deep indoors, some years hence. David Miliband has said: "I am obsessed with the next five years in Iraq, not the last five". We seem to have institutionalised duplicity in the executive, judiciary, intelligence services, Parliament and the Privy Council (the 'privy' is, of course, a water closet where nasty stuff is dumped and washed out). And those in power will, after feigned concern, simply flush the burning issues away.

You cannot trust our masters not to cover their tracks and it is now impossible to trust those they choose to lead investigations into improper conduct. Remember Hutton. Remember Butler.
It is a very British response, that is so clearly illustrated by the interminable Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday. In 1972 Lord Widgery decided the army did no wrong. Another inquiry was set up 10 years ago under Lord Saville. It still has to deliver a judgement. By the time it does – after spending millions of pounds – few will care.

Meanwhile, all the key players who lied grievously and sexed-up evidence have got away with it. More sickening still, the once conjoined twins Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell are today endowed with respect. Blair struts around the world stage believing himself to be a Mandela figure, a peace prophet. Campbell gets plaudits for his panache, a novel, his wit, intelligence and cockiness.

Carne Ross, a former Foreign Office advisor on Iraq, says we were duped. Brian Jones, former head of arms intelligence at the MOD believes the "dossier" was manipulated by Downing Street. According to Lord Bingham, Britain broke international law. Nick Clegg wants a full public inquiry, so too the families of soldiers killed in action. And Iraqis want to know who is responsible for the cries of grieving mothers as they deliver malformed foetuses. They will all wait in vain, I fear. There is no atonement, only glory for the sinners. Perhaps God really is on their side.

y.alibhaibrown@independent.co.uk
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/yasmin-alibhai-brown/yasmin-alibhaibrown-it-is-now-impossible-to-trust-any-official-inquiry-into-iraq-1657061.html

Remember! Remember!

Hussein Al-alak, the Iraq Solidarity Campaign

So have you decided whose side your on, when asked in the article Action for Iraqi children if you are with us or against us? When in knowledge of the fact that 1.5 million children died under the US/UK backed UN Sanctions, the “cabinet of war criminals”, have further destroyed the lives of millions of Iraq’s young, through "the supreme international crime", which was and still remains the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Dare you ask how many children have vanished since that day, when the invasion was launched in 2003, as a consequence of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction. When those now dead British soldiers were mobilised for the American’s false claims about Saddam Hussain working in collaboration with Osama Bin Laden.

Have you ever enquired about what has happened to the estimated 4.5 million orphaned Iraqi children, or the estimated 500,000 homeless orphans, whose only guardians are the watchful eyes of the stars, who look down upon them from a darkened sky.

Are you so frightened of being alone in Britain, that the bogey man under your bed, is no longer the mockery of your own imagination but just one of 513 Iraqi children, who the USA no longer view as being human beings but "imperative threats to security“, that having survived the IRA and the Lockerbie, that the unelected “Prime Minister” Gordon Brown, wants to lock every “suspected terrorist” up for 42 days without charge.

But as the unelected Gordon Brown barricades every Government department behind concrete walls, as a result of Labours fear of the British public, a December 2007 UNICEF report stated that 2.2 million Iraqi children lack adequate nutrition and an estimated 75,000 children are living in tents because of displacement caused by the war.

The UN has also reported that 80% of Iraqi families can't separate sewage water from water used for other household needs and that 70% lack access to potable water but as Britain combats terrorism, the campaign of fear is used solely to distract attention away from the 400,000 Iraqi children who are suffering from "wasting", which is characterized by chronic diarrhoea and high deficiencies of protein.

Are you convinced that your government is right and how does it feel to watch the “Mother of Parliaments” being degenerated beyond recognition, that it no longer represents the interests of either the people of Great Britain or even the façade of the beliefs it claims to uphold.

How does it feel to know, that when your troops came rolling into Iraq and mission was proclaimed “accomplished“, in 2003-4, 22,000 British people over the age of 65 died as a result of the cold and how does it feel to know that the hunt for imaginary weapons and chasing “terror suspects“, has resulted with "2.2 million British pensioners living below the poverty line”.

And with a shocking 3.9 million UK children living in poverty, in the year 2006/07, which is an increase of 100,000 on the previous year and the dismal Labour “forty year low” in the May elections, is it any wonder why any government would want to detain its “terror suspects” and spread its values around the world.

So have you now decided whose side your on? Remember, remember the fifth of November , Gunpowder, treason and plot. I see no reason, why the gunpowder treason, Should ever be forgot!