By IRNA,
London : A legal challenge to the British government’s condoning of hooding prisoners in its ‘Consolidated Guidance to Intelligence Officers and Service Personnel’ has been launched by an Iraqi victim of hooding by UK forces in 2006.
Alaa’ Nassif Jassim al-Bazzouni is seeking a judicial review of the guidelines announced by Prime Minister David Cameron in parliament in July 2010.
The guidance explicitly permits the use of hooding of prisoners, despite the recognised serious health risks associated with the practice, particularly in the heat of Iraq/Afghanistan wars, said al-Bazzouni’s solicitors, Public Interest Lawyers (PIL).
PIL said it also has “associations with the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, its use at Abu Ghraib, its implications in the death of (Basra hotel receptionist) Baha Mousa, the ban on hooding that had previously been put in place by the MoD (Ministry of Defence), and the ban on hooding announced to parliament on 2 March 1972.”
The use of hooding for ‘transit’ and ‘security’ purposes are both “nebulous concepts” cited as justification for the hooding of Mousa before his death in British custody in 2003, it said.
Britain has already admitted ‘substantial breaches’ of the European Convention of Human Rights over the killing of the hotel worker, paying out £2.83 million in compensation to his family and others and launching an inquiry.
Phil Shiner of PIL said the Mousa inquiry has already heard how the clear ban on hooding 1972 was “somehow lost and the practice re-introduced in Iraq to tragic effect.”
“That the government now reintroduces the barbaric practice of hooding as a matter of published policy is plainly wrong and unlawful,” Shiner said in a statement obtained by IRNA.
The new legal challenge is to be heard jointly with a separate claim brought by the Equality and Human Rights Commission which challenges other aspects of the same guidance.
PIL are currently acting for over 130 Iraqis who allege that they or their family members were unlawfully detained, ill-treated, or killed by the UK forces since the 2003 invasion.