Claims that British troops murdered, mutilated and tortured Iraqi detainees are “wholly and entirely without merit or justification”, a £31 million public inquiry has found.
The baseless allegations were the product of “deliberate and calculated lies” from Iraqi witnesses and detainees who were driven by a desire to smear the British military.
The devastating demolition of the serious allegations came in the 1,250-page findings of the four year Al-Sweady inquiry into accusations troops had killed and mistreated Iraqi detainees after a fierce clash in May 2004.
The findings are likely to increase demands for legal reforms to protect combat troops serving abroad from future human rights law cases.
Sir Thayne Forbes, the former High Court judge who chaired the inquiry, said the Iraqis had made claims of the “most serious possible nature”, including accusations of murder, torture, mutilation and degrading treatment.
After hearing from more than 300 witnesses, the inquiry concluded the “vast majority” of allegations, including all the most serious, were “wholly and entirely without merit or justification”.
It said: “Very many of those baseless allegations were the product of deliberate and calculated lies on the part of those who made them and who then gave evidence to this inquiry in order to support and perpetuate them. Other false allegations were the result of inappropriate and reckless speculation on the part of witnesses.”
Witnesses were in some cases driven by “ingrained hostility” to the British.
The exhaustive inquiry catalogued some instances of ill treatment, and said some soldiers had fallen “below the high standards normally expected of the British Army”.
It was critical of the way detainees were blindfolded, strip searched and not given proper meals, but found such ill treatment had often not been deliberate and several procedures had since been changed.
The inquiry praised British troops’ conduct during the fighting, saying they had displayed “exemplary courage, resolution and professionalism”.
Military witnesses had been “both truthful and reliable” during the inquiry, but by contrast several Iraqi detainees had been “unprincipled in the extreme and wholly without regard for the truth”.
The inquiry was ordered four years ago to look at accusations of mistreatment after a fierce clash known as the Battle of Danny Boy.
On May 14, 2004, heavily armed Iraqi insurgents ambushed vehicles belonging to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders near a checkpoint called Danny Boy, near the small town of Al Majar al’Kabir.
A fierce battle followed involving the Highlanders and soldiers of the 1st Battalion Princess of Wales’s Regiment and many Iraqis were killed in close quarters combat.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11298603/Al-Sweady-inquiry-clears-British-soldiers-of-murder-and-torture-claims.html
