“Hearts and Minds”: teaching Iraq to love freedom and democracy
01 May 2004
The government admitted in June that there are up to 75 inquiries into allegations of killings, woundings and ill-treatment of Iraqi civilians by British troops serving in Iraq. The figures were revealed only after the Ministry of Defence's (MoD) original estimate of 33 cases was amended following a "verification exercise to ensure all cases were being properly investigated and centrally reported." Later the same month the first prosecutions were announced.
Four British soldiers are to face military courts martial, accused of assault and the indecent assault of Iraqi civilian prisoners. The charges arise from the arrest of one of the soldiers, Fusilier Gary Bartram, of the 1st Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, when he took a roll of film to be developed on 28 May 2003 while on home leave. The roll included four photographs showing male Iraqi prisoners being tortured and sexually abused in Iraq during the summer of 2003. Shop workers called in the police and Bartram was arrested when he tried to collect the pictures later the same day. He was handed over to military authorities and an investigation was launched by the Special Investigations Branch of the Royal Military Police who questioned eight soldiers from Bartram's regiment. They recommended that four of the soldiers face prosecution.
It was more than a year after the arrest of Bartram, before the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, announced in the House of Lords on 14 June that:
The APA [Army Prosecuting Authority] directed trial on 11 June 2004 against four soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers on charges relating to alleged abuses of Iraqi civilians. The charges against the four include assault, indecent assault which apparently involves making the victims engage in sexual activity between themselves, and a military charge of prejudicing good order and military discipline...The case concerns conduct alleged to have occurred while the civilians were temporarily detained, but not in a prison or detention facility. It involves photographic evidence developed in this country and referred to the UK police. A date for the trial has yet to be set by the Military Court Service (House of Lords Hansard, 14.6.04.)
Three of the four men were named in the media as Fusilier Gary Bartram, Cpl Daniel Kenyon and L/Cpl Mark Cooley.
The photographic evidence against the men is similar to the pictures taken by US troops at Abu Ghraib prison and other US military establishments in Iraq. One photograph appears to have been taken in a warehouse. It showed a terrified Iraqi man stripped and suspended from a rope attached to the forks of a fork-lift truck. He is being watched by a laughing soldier. Another photograph "looked like an Iraqi pow being forced to give a soldier oral sex" and another showed "a close-up of the naked backsides of two Iraqis, as if they were simulating anal sex." The fourth photograph showed two Iraqis, naked on the ground.
The delay in bringing the charges against the responsible soldiers was criticised by Adam Price MP who accused the MoD of dragging its feet. He told the Independent newspaper:
there has been an abject failure within the Ministry of Defence to address [the issue of bringing charges against the soldiers]. It has taken more than a year to reach a stage where people are facing charges.
Andrew Gilligan, writing in the Evening Standard, noted that "the only British soldier to be prosecuted so far is a military policeman who killed a dog."
In June the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, admitted that an Iraqi prisoner had been hooded and shackled by US troops during an interview with British intelligence officers, thereby contravening the Geneva Convention. In July Severin Carrell, writing in the Independent on Sunday, revealed that "The routine hooding of Iraqi prisoners was sanctioned by British Army commanders despite repeated warnings that the practice broke human rights laws." The practice o