Abuse photos 'shame Britain'

Photographs of British troops allegedly torturing and sexually humiliating Iraqi civilians were revealed yesterday.

The "shocking and appalling" images were produced at a court martial in Osnabruck, Germany, in which three British soldiers are accused of carrying out acts of abuse on Iraqis in an aid camp just weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The acts include forcing detainees to strip and simulate sex acts, which were then photographed by servicemen. One of the photographs shows a grimacing Iraqi civilian bound tightly in an Army cargo net being suspended from a forklift driven by a British soldier.

A second depicts a soldier dressed in shorts and a T-shirt standing on the bound and tied body of an Iraqi civilian.

Other pictures show two naked Iraqi men being forced to simulate anal sex and two Iraqis forced to simulate oral sex.

Publication of the photographs echoes the controversy surrounding United States troops' abuse of Iraqi prisoners - also captured on film - at the notorious Abu Ghraib jail, near Baghdad.

The head of the British Army said he utterly condemned all acts of abuse.

But General Sir Mike Jackson, the Chief of the General Staff, insisted that only a "small number" of the 65,000 servicemen and women who had served in Iraq were alleged to have been involved in such incidents.

"Brute Camp" was the starkest of the English newspapers' headlines reacting to the publication of the pictures.

All the front pages shared an emotion. "Britain's Shame", said one; "Shocking. Appalling", another.

Left and right wing, intellectual and populist, all ran with the same theme.

"They are pictures to make us sick with shame," said the Sun.

The Times said the pictures would "provoke outrage in the Arab world and sully the reputation of the British Army".

The horror of the headline writers was reflected in radio and television broadcasts - with all pointing to the damage to public opinion in Iraq that will result from such images and the detail that will continue to be made public through the rest of the court martial hearing.

 

Three soldiers, Corporal Daniel Kenyon, 33, and Lance Corporal Mark Cooley, 23, from Newcastle upon Tyne, and Lance Corporal Darren Larkin, 30, from Oldham, Greater Manchester, face charges of indecency, assault and sexually humiliating the Iraqis at a storage depot outside the southern city of Basra in May 2003.

The three men, from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, pleaded not guilty to all but one of the 10 charges against them.

If convicted, they face dismissal in disgrace from the Army and a maximum jail term of 10 years.

The troops are based in Germany.

Larkin admitted one charge of assaulting an Iraqi civilian, but denied a charge of forcing two Iraqi males to undress in front of others.

In the photographs Larkin is seen wearing boxer shorts and flip-flops while standing on a bound Iraqi prisoner brandishing a "cam pole".

Defence counsel William England said: "He is ashamed by this unacceptable and mindless act and knows that his actions have brought shame on his proud regiment, himself and his family."

Kenyon faces six charges in total, including two of aiding and abetting a person to force two naked males being detained by British troops to simulate a sex act.

Cooley faces three charges, including tying an unknown male prisoner to a forklift and simulating punching and kicking another unknown male also being detained by the Army.

The three accused based their "not guilty" pleas on claims that they were ordered to "work the prisoners hard".

Their defence lawyers are expected to argue that superior officers created a climate in which prisoner abuse was sanctioned.

The court martial was yesterday shown a total of 22 colour photographs of the alleged abuse.

Lieutenant Colonel Mick Clapham, the Army's chief prosecuting counsel, told the hearing: "It cannot be said that these photographs are of incidents that are anything other than shocking and appalling."

Addressing a board of seven Army officers and Judge Advocate Michael Hunter, who will rule on the case, Clapham asked them "not to be emotionally swayed despite the nature of these photographs. I ask for your clinical objectivity."

The seven officers shook their heads in disbelief as they looked at the pictures handed to them by a military policeman.

Clapham told the court martial that the incidents occurred when the accused were part of an attachment of British soldiers at the Army's so-called "Bread Basket" supply camp, half a kilometre west of Basra, which was full of food and humanitarian aid for the Iraqis.

"Unfortunately the Bread Basket camp had a looting problem," he said. "It was being raided by looters every night so measures were taken to deal with the situation."

The court martial heard how the commander of the camp, Major Dan Taylor, launched a controversial operation codenamed Ali Baba in a bid to round up and detain the looters and "work them hard".

"There was a difficulty with Major Taylor's order," Clapham said. "He hoped it would be a deterrent." But, he said, the major's order to "work the prisoners hard" was not in accordance with humanitarian laws and appeared to have been in breach of Article 4 of the Geneva Convention.

Clapham said, however, that senior officers had decided not to take legal action against Taylor.

"If the defendants had done no more than fulfil the order that was given to them they would not be facing a court martial today," he said.

Clapham said the British troops at the bread basket camp were ordered to parade at 6am on the morning of May 15, 2003, dressed in shorts and T-shirts because of the heat.

Armed with SA-80 rifles and camouflage net poles as weapons, they were ordered to police the perimeter of the camp and to capture and detain looters.

"The Iraqi civilians were made to carry back the stores they had looted," Clapham said. "They were all assembled near the main gate of the camp and then broken up into groups of three or four and taken away."

He described how Kenyon, the senior NCO accused, was given charge of three or four Iraqi civilians, who were taken to a vast warehouse in a remote corner of the camp to be "worked hard".

Photographs of the detained Iraqi civilians showed them being taken on a forced run while carrying crates of milk powder over their heads as part of an alleged punishment.

"It was after that that the incidents occurred," Clapham said.

Kenyon is charged with failing to report the incidents of abuse to senior officers and with aiding and abetting those who carried out the acts.

The three accused were all identified on the photographs presented as evidence to the court martial.

Cooley in a statement to military police admitted driving the fork lift truck; Larkin was depicted standing, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt on a bound Iraqi civilian; and Kenyon was shown as present in one of the other photographs.

Two other pictures showed Cooley pretending to punch and kick an Iraqi civilian lying bound in a net on the ground. Cooley did not deny that he was identified in the photograph as the perpetrator.

The court heard how the photographs came to the notice of police in Britain.

In a written statement read out to the court martial, a woman shop assistant at a photographic store in Tamworth, Staffordshire, said 20-year-old Fusilier Gary Bartlam had given her a film of his tour of duty in Iraq to process.

She said that when the photographs were developed she was disturbed by their contents.

"Bartlam seemed a very well mannered man but when I saw the photographs I called the police," her statement said.

Bartlam was arrested when he came to collect the photographs. He was convicted of a number of charges by a court martial last week.

Army legal adviser Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Mercer told the court that soldiers in Iraq had been told how to treat prisoners of war and civilian prisoners.

- INDEPENDENT, Herald correspondent