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British troops accused of abusing Iraqi detainees
A lawyer for 200 Iraqis demanding a public inquiry into what they have described as brutal mistreatment by British soldiers in a secret detention center near Basra told the High Court in London on Friday that the abuse amounted to "Britain's Abu Ghraib." The assertion was buttressed with video recordings that appeared to show British interrogators bullying, humiliating and threatening a detainee.
The opening day of the court hearing featured some of the most sensational accusations made against the British forces in years of inconclusive lawsuits and official inquiries.
At the heart of the latest court action is the contention that the abuses began on March 20, 2003, the day that British forces entered Iraq, continued almost until the last British troops withdrew in 2009, and were encouraged by army training procedures.
At least nine detainees are said to have died as a result of their mistreatment.
Michael Fordham, the lawyer for the former detainees, said they had been subjected to 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.
"Is this Britain's Abu Ghraib?" Mr. Fordham asked the panel of three High Court judges, referring to the most feared of Saddam Hussein's prisons, which became the principal American detention center after the invasion. Abuses of Iraqis by American guards at the prison, first revealed in the spring of 2004, shook the Bush administration, and contributed to growing popular disillusionment with the Iraq invasion in the United States.