By IRNA
London : The British government is to admit “substantive breaches” of the European Convention on Human Rights over the death and torture of Iraqi civilians in the custody of British soldiers, Defence Secretary Des Browne has revealed.
Browne said the admissions, to be made in court Friday, included breaches of Article Two on the right of life and Article Three on the prohibition of torture over the 2003 killing of Basra hotel worker Baha Mousa while being detained by UK troops.
Substantive breaches of the prohibition of torture were also being admitted in relation to eight other Iraqi detainees, he announced in a parliamentary statement on Thursday.
The announcement comes after years of legal battles in British courts, which resulted in the claim by Ministry of Defence (MoD) that UK troops on overseas operations were not covered by European human rights law being dismissed.
Mousa, who died while in British custody in September 2003, reportedly had 93 identifiable injuries on his body and suffered asphyxiation.
The admission coincided with Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth offering “sincere apologies and sympathy to the family of Baha Mousa and the other eight Iraqi detainees.”
“All but a handful of the over 120,000 British troops who have served in Iraq have conducted themselves to the highest standards,” Ainsworth said.
But human rights lawyer Phil Shiner, acting for the 9 Iraqis, said that their families remained angry to the British government’s “apparent whitewash.”
“They regret the suggestion that only a “very small minority [of soldiers committed acts of abuse”.
If this was so why are there scores of claims about torture, abuse and killings in detention with UK forces during the period May 2003 to June 2004?” Shiner said.
“What the Secretary of State for Defence needs to do is to admit there has been not just a substantive breach of the victims’ human rights but also a procedural breach,” he said, in announcing that the families were still pressing ahead for an independent inquiry.
“My clients are bitterly disappointed, but not surprised, that the government has not had the integrity to hold the independent inquiry required into the UK’s detention policy in Iraq,” the lawyer said.
He said they would “force an inquiry out of the government in the High Court now that the House of Lords have ruled that the Human Rights Act did apply and the government have admitted that UK forces did breach the human rights of Mousa and his eight colleagues.” The new admission is already expected to cost the British government millions of pounds in compensation over Mousa’s death and the abuse of eight other Iraqi civilians while held in a British detention centre at the same time.