Inquiry opens into alleged Iraqi murders by British troops

The Al-Sweady inquiry, named after one of the alleged victims of torture, is examining claims that Iraqis were unlawfully killed at Camp Abu Naji in the south of the country on May 14 and 15, 2004, that five Iraqi detainees were tortured at the base, and again at a detention facility at Shaibah Logistics Base between May 14 and September 23 2004.

In an opening statement today, counsel to the inquiry Jonathan Acton Davis QC said it aims to identify the circumstances of the deaths of 28 Iraqi men. For three, death certificates documented signs of torture, several had missing eyes and one man’s penis was missing.

The inquiry was shown photographs of bloodied corpses with severe wounds. One of them showed a man with a metal watch around his wrist and his hand missing. Several were almost completely disfigured.

Danny Boy

When and how 28 Iraqis died is disputed, and is what the inquiry is looking into.

The events around their deaths began with an attack by Iraqi insurgents on vehicles belonging to the Argyll and Southern Highlanders near the “Danny Boy” permanent vehicle check point.

In the ensuing firefight many Iraqis were killed and two British troops were injured. It was normal practice for the fallen Iraqis to have been left on the battlefield – however, the MoD says the order was given to bring bodies back to Abu Naji to see if the dead included the main suspect in the murder of six British soldiers at Majar al-Kabir in June 2003.

Nine prisoners were also taken to the camp, five of whom – Hussein Fadel Abass, Atiyah Sayid Abdelreza, Hussein Jabbari Ali, Mahdi Jassim Abdullah and Ahmad Jabbar Ahmood – have since claimed violations of their human rights at the high court.

The inquiry, named after Hamid Al-Sweady, one of those allegedly murdered at the camp, will hear from around 60 Iraqi witnesses and over 200 British military witnesses.

Dead or alive?

Mr Acton Davis (pictured above) said: “The Iraqi witnesses say that the evidence points to there having been a number of Iraqi men taken into CAN (Camp Abu Naji) alive by the British military on May 14 2004 and who were handed back to their families dead the next day.

“The military say that the evidence points to 20 Iraqi dead having been recovered following the battle on May 14 2004, also nine detainees, and that they were taken back to CAN and handed back the following day.

“In an ideal world an inquiry such as this might hope to have a forensically sound video and/or photographic evidence of the arrival and departure of Iraqi dead and detainees at the British camp so that the identity, numbers, and physical condition of each person at each stage could be established with little room for doubt or disagreement. Alas, such evidence is not available.”

The Ministry of Defence has strenuously denied that any of the Iraqis died at Abu Naji, and says they all died on the battlefield.

Up until this point the inquiry has cost around £15m, and is set to last another year. Its findings will be reported in 2014.

If the inquiry rules against the British military, then the ‘Battle of Danny Boy’ and the following events could go down in history as the worst atrocity carried out by the British in the Iraq war.

It is the second public inquiry into British military conduct in Iraq, following an inquiry into the death of 26-year-old hotel receptionist Baha Mousa in British custody in Basra in 2003. That inquiry reported that Mousa had died after suffering “an appalling episode of serious gratuitous violence” at the hands of British troops.