Baha Mousa details condemns 'cowardly and brutal' British soldiers
Published by Julia Volkovah under baha mousa inquiry, local news belfast on 4:37 AM
Gage report cites 'loss of authority and lack of ethical audacity' for death of Baha Mousa after 36 hours of custody in Basra.
British armed forced imposed "brutal and spineless" attacks on Iraqi civilians subjecting them to "unjustified" booting and torturing an investigation into the death of the prisoner Baha Mousa has found.
In a destroying reflection of military culture, the retired appeal court judge Sir William Gage verdict that there was prevalent unawareness of what was allowed in handling hostages of war.
Though he did not advise there had been a policy of orderly mistreatment towards Iraqi suspects, he condemned the non-appearance of any "adequate MoD dogma on cross-questioning".
The report at the end of the two-year investigation contains savage condemnation of individual soldiers and officials as well as unflattering descriptions of poor internal statements, "loss of discipline and a lack of ethical courage".
Mousa, 26, a Basra hotel employee, died after spending 36 hours in imprisonment in the custody of soldiers from the 1st Battalion Queen's Lancashire Regiment. He was found to have undergone from 93 external wounds.
Gage found that even senior commanders were uninformed of a ban forced in 1972 on the use of five techniques, including hooding, stress positions and sleep deficiency. The hooding, which was banned under the Geneva Convention, was "unwarranted and totally intolerable".
"For approximately the whole of the period up to Baha Mousa's death … the prisoner were kept handcuffed, hooded and in stress positions in severe heat and conditions of some immorality," the report said.
Four soldiers were singled out for grave condemnation, as well as Colonel Jorge Mendonca, the unit's commanding officer, who, he said, "bears a serious responsibility for these happenings".
Judge Gage said he must to have recognized what was going on in the imprison centre and should have appreciated the dangers of "conditioning". He is acquitted, however, of having any information of the tortures.
Corporal Donald Payne was the only soldier offender of what the report explains as a "terrible catalogue of baseless and atrocious violence on the defenseless detainees". Gage calls him a "violent bully".
