British soldiers accused of executing civilians

Lawyers say battle may have ended in 'atrocious episode' of torture and killing

Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian, Saturday February 23 2008

"Ambushed by fighters of the Mahdi army, the soldiers of the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment attacked with everything they had, from bayonets to tank shells.

The fierce gunfight became known as the Battle for Danny Boy, the name British troops gave to a junction on Route 6, just south of Amara on the road to Basra.

If allegations made yesterday are true, the battle on May 14 2004 also led to the torture and execution of up to 20 Iraqi civilians, some of whom were mutilated before they died. It may be that British soldiers and officers covered up "one of the most atrocious episodes in British army history," lawyer Martyn Day said yesterday.

Allegations of mistreatment of Iraqi civilians at Camp Abu Naji, the British base near Amara, were first reported in the Guardian a month after the battle. Military police were asked to investigate and cleared the soldiers of any wrongdoing......

The two lawyers said yesterday they had asked the MoD for copies of the army's medical logs, photographs and the military police report into the incident. The ministry, they said, refused to hand them over."

'I heard the terrible sound of someone being choked'

The witness statements of the five Iraqis were signed in Istanbul where Martyn Day and Phil Shiner interviewed them over a period of four days last month

"They [the soldiers] put me on a similar type of chair as before and I heard a sound of chains from behind me ... Immediately after this someone placed a rope around my neck.

I thought they were going to hang me by pushing the chair from underneath me and I said the shahada prayer which Muslims say just before they die, remembered my family and cried ... Suddenly without warning I heard a very loud scream from about two metres behind my right shoulder ...

It was a series of screams of a person who appeared to be in excruciating pain. They were not screams of terror but more of pain ... This was followed by the pouring of water and the sound of buckets or something like that and I heard a chair being dropped. I smelt blood and then heard the sound of mopping"......"