27 Mar 2008

The Ministry of Defence today admitted violating the human rights of Iraqi Baha Mousa, a hotel receptionist who died in 2003 after sustaining 93 injuries while in UK detention in Iraq.

In the case of Mousa and eight other Iraqis, the Government acknowledged “substantive breaches” of the European Convention on Human Rights which protects the right to life and prohibits torture.

The immediate implication of the MoD’s statement is that there must be a full independent inquiry into systemic problems whenever detainees suffer inhuman treatment, torture or death whilst detained in UK military establishments anywhere in the world.

While welcoming the MoD’s disclosure, Liberty Director Shami Chakrabarti said:

"A direct legal and moral consequence of today's admission that Mousa and others were unlawfully tortured and killed in British custody is that there must be a wholesale independent inquiry into what went wrong. British soldiers should never be sent into post-conflict situations without adequate training and advice. Baha Mousa is the Stephen Lawrence of Iraq.”

Liberty pointed out that the families of the Iraqi dead who brought their case to the Ministry of Defence were seeking justice for their loved ones and rejected arguments that the families are merely seeking financial compensation.

In the landmark Al-Skeini decision handed down in June 2007, the House of Lords Appellate Committee ruled that those held in UK detention facilities in Iraq are protected by the Human Rights Act. In the leading speech, Lord Rodger of Earlsferry dealt with the Government’s argument that bereaved families of those who die in UK detention should have to seek redress in the European Court of Human Rights:

“…the Secretary of State…says that sections 6 and 7 [of the Human Rights Act] are to be interpreted in such a way that, in these exceptional cases, a victim is left remediless in the British courts. Contrary to the central policy of the Act, the victim must resort to Strasbourg. My Lords, I am unable to accept that submission. It involves reading into sections 6 and 7 a qualification which the words do not contain and which runs counter to the central purpose of the Act.”


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NOTES TO EDITORS

1. Baha Mousa, [digital post mortem photos available] aged 26, was arrested during a raid by UK Armed forces at Haitham Hotel, detained and allegedly beaten to death by UK soldiers. He had been taken with eight others to the UK’s Temporary Detention Facility. The individuals were allegedly subjected to prolonged hooding with sandbags, prolonged stress positions such as sitting on an imaginary chair, prolonged sleep deprivation, ritualised abuse through kickboxing games where soldiers apparently competed to kick the detainees further across the room and prolonged beatings including kicking. On 13 March 2007 a military court martial at Camp Bulford found Corporal Payne of the Queen’s Lancashire regiment guilty of inhumane treatment and found not guilty the remaining officers and soldiers charged with various offences relating to the incident.

2. Lawyers Phil Shiner and others representing the Iraqi dead expressed concern that “conditioning” tactics such as hooding, handcuffing, sleep deprivation and using stress positions during interrogation, which were outlawed in 1972 by Edward Heath’s Government, had been used on Iraqi detainees held in UK custody.

3. In Al-Skeini v Secretary of State for Defence, the appellants argued that the six Iraqi civilians killed during the occupation of Iraq had their rights breached under Article 2 (the right to life) and/or Article 3 (the prohibition against torture) of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Government is therefore obliged to hold an independent inquiry into their treatment. The High Court and the Court of Appeal found that the Human Rights Act applies in situations where an individual is detained by a British authority, in this case, the military. The House of Lords (by a margin of 4 to 1) upheld this view. Interveners in the case included Liberty, the Aire Centre, Amnesty International, the Association for the Prevention of Torture, the Bar Human Rights Committee, British Irish Rights Watch, Interights, Justice, Kurdish Human Rights Project, the Law Society of England and Wales and the Redress Trust.