By Christina Berger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe
LONDON, England — A lawyer representing more than 200 Iraqi civilians told the high court in London on Friday that the Iraqis suffered systematic mistreatment and torture by British soldiers in a secret prison near Basra. The lawyer called this “Britain’s Abu Ghraib.” These allegations come not longer after secret UK military training aids advocating abuse and even torture were leaked to a newspaper.
Michael Fordham, a lawyer for the former detainees, told the court that the abuse of detainees began when British forces first entered Iraq in March 2003 until they withdrew from Iraq in 2009. According to the New York Times, Fordham claimed the former detainees had experienced “beatings, starvation, sleep deprivation, electric shocks, prolonged periods of nakedness and sexual humiliation by female soldiers, sensory deprivation through the enforced use of hoods, earmuffs and blackened goggles, and exposure to pornographic DVDs.”
The solicitors representing the former detainees submitted video footage which they say substantiate the allegations. The interrogators themselves filmed over 1,200 videos, and 13 of them were submitted to the panel of three High Court judges.
One of the videos, which can be viewed on the Guardian’s website, shows two interrogators screaming obscenities at a detainee. The interrogators ignore the man when he says he has not been allowed to sleep, and that he has not had food or drink in two days. One of the interrogators threatens the man with execution. The lawyers for the detainees claim that the man was beaten severely after he was led away from the camera, as evidenced by the muffled sounds at the end of the video.
The hearing before the high court is expected to last three days, at which time the court will have to decide whether or not to overrule two successive British governments, as well as military commanders, who have previously refused to initiate a public inquiry. Opponents of an inquiry have claimed that past reports of abuse of detainees were individual incidents, the result of a few bad apples as opposed to systemic, command-approved abuse.
Phil Shiner, a lawyer for the former detainees, believes that it’s “nonsense” to claim it’s a case of a few bad apples. He also asserts that people at the highest level of government knew what was going on, and only a public inquiry will shed light on the truth of the matter.
“We want accountability, reparations and an apology,” Mr. Shiner said. “There are lessons that have to be learned.”
For more information, please see:
BBC — Iraqi civilians systematically abused, court hears — 5 November 2010
NYT — British Troops Accused of Abusing Iraqi Detainees — 5 November 2010
GUARDIAN — Iraqi prisoners were abused at ‘UK’s Abu Ghraib’, court hears — 5 November 2010
