PANORAMA:
ON WHOSE ORDERS?

Presenter Jeremy Vine
Good evening. On Panorama tonight. The Battle of Danny Boy - a violent and bloody fire-fight, which left 28 Iraqis dead and a clutch of medals for the victors. It’s a story of tremendous courage, which represents the British army at its absolute best. Lawyers acting for Iraqis are now saying what other soldiers did after this incident amounted to torture unlawful killing and cover-up.

Hussain Jabbari
He said to me ‘You are a liar,’ and then I heard him loading his handgun and he fired two rounds towards me. I don’t know whether it was above me or to my side.

Presenter Jeremy Vine
The Ministry of Defence say its soldiers did nothing wrong and the evidence of abuse is far from clear cut. But it’s not just coming from Iraqis.

Keegan
All the blokes were running past and punching him in the head and there was a massive ditch and he was on his knees in there. Every time he kept crying out he was knocked to the floor, then they’d leave him for a bit until he started squirming, lift him up again until he started moaning again.

Presenter Jeremy Vine
For more a year now Panorama has been investigating allegations, which, if true, would cast a stain on the reputation of our troops in Iraq. Until this month a gagging order prevented us or anyone else reporting them but we went to court and we won the right to air this programme. So tonight we can weigh the evidence. And ask if this incident we’ll hear about wasn’t the inevitable result of a decision to allow brutal interrogation techniques; a decision even the attorney general at the time tells us should not have been taken. The ground invasion of Iraq began in March 2003. It was a rout. But within days one officer saw something that worried him deeply: 40 Iraqi prisoners hooded, handcuffed and left kneeling for hours in the blazing sun. Lt Col Nicholas Mercer was a senior lawyer on the ground in Iraq. The Ministry of Defence has told us we cannot interview Mercer. But army court transcripts reveal he repeatedly signalled up the line that the British army was breaking the law. The response alarmed him.

Mercer Reenactor
I am informed that this is in accordance with British Army Doctrine on tactical questioning. In my view … it violated the law of armed conflict.

Reporter John Sweeney
It was the first hint that in defiance of British law and the Geneva Convention the Army was using techniques banned as ‘inhuman’ more than thirty years previously.

Reporter John Sweeney
In 1972 – with the troubles in Northern Ireland at their height - the British government faced outrage when it emerged that republican prisoners had been tortured.

Former Republican prisoner
They just got hold of my arms and spread them out like that there. And I stood there for hours until the blood seemed to leave my fingers.

Reporter John Sweeney
These interrogation techniques became known as the Big Five: hooding, stress positions, constant noise, deprived of sleep and starved of food and water.

Former Replican prisoner
I was made to face a wall, sit on chair, not speak, not sleep, not nothing. Just sit there. If I did close my eyes I got a thump on the face.

Reporter John Sweeney
As public anger grew, the government got out of the torture business fast. Prime Minister Edward Heath told Parliament he was banning the five techniques – and he left no wriggle room.

Edward Heath Reenactor
The techniques will not be used in future as an aid to interrogation. The statement that I have made covers all future circumstances.

It couldn’t be clearer. Call it torture, call it inhuman treatment. The British Army would never use it again.

John
Let’s have a look at this one.

Reporter John Sweeney
But within weeks of the invasion of Iraq, British Private Gary Bartlam was among many snapping images like this: Iraqi prisoners, hooded, made to stand for hours on end, deprived of water, food and sleep. The five techniques were back.

Gary Bartlam
As You can see clearly they’re tagged, cuffs behind their back, sandbags on the head. I did a total of four hours altogether for watching those detainees.

Reporter John Sweeney
Just four hours continuously?

Gary Bartlam
No, I had a bit of a break then obviously come on a bit later on in the day. So potentially they could have been there over eight hours.

Reporter John Sweeney
Bartlam was only doing what he was told. But on whose orders? The answer may lie here at the Defence Intelligence and Security Centre at Chicksands, Bedford, where the military are taught how to interrogate. MoD rules now specifically state that the five techniques should not be used. But according to court testimony stressing and hooding were approved at brigade level in Iraq to prolong the shock of capture for up to six hours.

Major Tony Royce
I did not feel I wanted to extend that process for an unlimited period, it was too much of a risk, conditioning is something that clearly causes a certain amount of stress.

Reporter John Sweeney
And in May 2003 there was plenty of stress at this place. Camp Breadbasket. Some British soldiers playing sadistic games. Iraqi prisoners, accused of looting, were beaten, trussed up, humiliated. Some of the photographs - though not all - were taken by Gary Bartlam. When they first emerged they caused outrage. Tony Blair was quick to distance the government from blame.

Tony Blair
We do not tolerate this type of activity in any shape or form at all.

Reporter John Sweeney
One of the men to get the blame was Gary Bartlam. He admitted aiding and abetting abuse by taking the photos. He went to jail. No officers were prosecuted. He says he lost the habit of questioning orders when, during training in Germany five months earlier, a corporal spotted he’d mislaid his gas mask.

Gary Bartlam
I said: ‘Sorry it won’t happen again’. At this point he still kept raising his voice and he says, ‘stick your fucking jaw out’. And I said, ‘no’. And he said it again. On the fourth time he swung – punched me in the face. He doesn’t just break one place with the force of the blow what he punched us with it obviously followed through and snapped this side as well.

Reporter John Sweeney
The lance corporal was cleared of assault. He told a court martial Bartlam lashed out and when he pushed him in self defence - he fell, breaking his jaw. Bartlam says a culture of casual violence spilled over to the treatment of prisoners. With two metal plates in his jaw, Bartlam insists that he was in no position to challenge that.

Gary Bartlam
They say that ohh, I’m a bad apple. What is it now? A bad orchard in the army?

Reporter John Sweeney
Even the Red Cross was worried, accusing British Army interrogators in April 2003 of ‘brutal treatment’ – hooding and stress positions. And Lt Col Mercer was still trying to change things. He wrote an order, setting out how the British Army should behave.

Words of Lt Col. Nicholas Mercer
Detained persons should be treated with humanity and dignity at all times. They should not be assaulted.

Reporter John Sweeney
Mercer’s 2003 order contained a disturbing reference.

Mercer Reenactor
There have recently been a number of deaths in custody where Iraqi civilians have died whilst being held by various units in theatre.

Reporter John Sweeney
The MoD insist that Colonel Mercer was referring to just two deaths in British Army custody: they say both were investigated and found to be due to natural causes. Mercer’s warning went unheeded. But then this: September 2003, the British are hunting for insurgents who’d killed an officer with a roadside bomb. The suspect has vanished - but they arrest ten hotel workers.

Reporter John Sweeney
Hooded, the Iraqis are kept in stress positions, deprived of water, food and sleep and suffering constant noise from a nearby generator.

Baha Malki, Iraqi prisoner
If we failed to keep upright we would be strangled around our necks until we were out of breath, to make us stand quickly to get ready for more beatings. The British soldier used to kick us in the kidneys and around the head to force us to stand.

Reporter John Sweeney
After 36 hours of brutality, the men were left lying in their own excrement, suffering from internal bleeding, ruptured organs and broken bones. And one of them, the hotel receptionist Baha Mousa, lay sprawled over an open toilet. He was dead.

Phil Shiner
None of the people who were responsible were charged or even called as witnesses in some cases. Nobody is any the wiser as to who killed Baha Mousa. Nobody has got to the bottom of how it was that the big five were reintroduced and used in that incident. It’s woefully inadequate.

Reporter John Sweeney
Baha Mousa’s killing led a war crimes trial lasting six months. At the end, six soldiers walked free. One lowly corporal admitted inhuman treatment. Some said the wrong people had been charged. There were 93 separate injuries on Baha Mousa’s body. No-one was charged with murder.

Phil Shiner
Leaving aside the absolute prohibition of thou shalt never torture, how on earth do you win hearts and minds which is what this was all about. If you torture people the word gets out. Leaving aside the moral objections it makes no military or political sense.

Reporter John Sweeney
Last year, Shiner took the government to court and won a ruling that Iraqi detainees should have the protection of British law. The man responsible for setting the rules under which the British Army operates is the Attorney General. Back in 1977, the then Attorney General Sam Silkin had reaffirmed the Heath ban, saying

Sam Silkin
The government now give this unqualified undertaking, that the five techniques will not in any circumstances be re-introduced as aid to interrogation.

Reporter John Sweeney
No wriggle-room there, either. So who allowed the ban to be sidestepped? Was it Blair’s Attorney General? We asked him.

Lord Goldsmith
There is no question at all of anyone in my office let alone me or of advising me, it was legitimate, legitimate to interrogate whilst hooding or using sleep deprivation or any of those techniques, full stop.

Reporter John Sweeney
Nevertheless that happened?

Lord Goldsmith
Well, it appears there was confusion about what the rules in relation to interrogation were.

Reporter John Sweeney
And as we stand at the moment no-one is responsible for that confusion?

Lord Goldsmith
I think the Ministry of Defence are probably the responsible department to understand with the army what actually took place, to learn the lessons from it to make sure it never happens again.

Reporter John Sweeney
In response to the row about prisoner abuse in Iraq, the then head of the British Army, General Sir General Sir Mike Jackson, took action.

General Sir Mike Jackson
I will be appointing a senior experienced officer to assess what lessons we may need to learn.

Reporter John Sweeney
Brigadier Robert Aitken took three years to produce 38 pages. It was published last month. Aitken said the big five were wrong. So what happened to the ban?

General Sir Mike Jackson
Robert Aitken makes the point in his report that he would need another look at why that statement by the Heath Government why it appears to have gone into a black hole with the intervening 32 years or so I don’t know what the answer to that is.

Reporter John Sweeney
So on whose orders did the Heath ban on torture end up in a black hole? No-one in power will say. Exactly who put Britain back in the torture business remains a mystery. The Aitken report backed the view that episodes like this were the exception not the rule.

General Sir Mike Jackson
It basically found that there was no evidence whatsoever of any endemic behaviour of that nature as he put it one hundred and twenty thousand soldiers passed through Iraq of which 24 or it might be 25 were charged with behaviour in this way. It’s very interesting isn’t it that these allegations, nearly all of them bar one I think go back to 2003 there was one in 2004 and nothing since.

Reporter John Sweeney
This beating in April 2004 is the event the general is referring to. But the book does not close there. Later this year Lawyers acting for Iraqis will come here to the High Court later in the year with allegations that go much further than casual abuse. The accusations against the British Army? War crimes. The Battle of Danny Boy began when a patrol of Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were ambushed at a checkpoint near Majar Al Kabir – the town where six British military police had been killed a year before. Pictures shot by soldiers elsewhere in southern Iraq give a sense of what it would have been like when the Argylls came under fire from the Mahdi Army, the group now bringing religious oppression to Basra and the south. The Argylls called in reenforcements from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment.

Mark Keegan
And the first thing I remember of that was an RPG flying across the road and just in front of our vehicle.

Reporter John Sweeney
Mark Keegan and his mate Rob Schwar took on the Iraqi gunmen, dug-in near a derelict factory.

Rob Schwar
They were only fifteen metres in front of us, which isn’t very far. It’s enough for them to throw grenades over. One landed right next to us.

Mark Keegan
Once the dust had settled, I had a burning sensation and I was like this can’t be happening. I rolled over and I could see the holes, I could see the blood pissing through.

Reporter John Sweeney
This photograph of Keegan was taken immediately after he was injured. He’d suffered a shrapnel wound in his groin. From now on, he was just a witness.

Mark Keegan
The medic pulled me back a little bit and that’s where I watched most of the attack from. Took my helmet off started smoking fags.

Reporter John Sweeney
More British reinforcements charged down the road from Camp Abu Naji as detailed in internal regimental reports. They too were ambushed in what became one of the biggest fire-fights in southern Iraq. At least 28 Iraqis died – but there were no British losses. After three hours of fighting, an extraordinary order was issued – pick up the Iraqi dead. The logic behind it was to check them against a list of those wanted for killing the six military policemen. The order was not popular with the troops – and it handed the Iraqi insurgency the chance of a propaganda victory.

Rob Schwar
To be honest they didn’t look like real human beings. They looked like Mannequins. They were yellow and just quite stiff. It wasn’t a nice thing having to stand next to them whilst still doing top cover. Still protecting yourself next checkpoint.

Reporter John Sweeney
The British Army say they logged and photographed 20 bodies at Abu Naji and handed them over the next day. As we’ll see the Iraqis claim some of their people were alive when they entered the camp and then died in custody. This photograph shows some of prisoners taken after Danny Boy, blindfolded and cuffed. The injured Mark Keegan saw what happened to another young prisoner who British soldiers say they found in tears next to the remains of a dismantled gun.

Mark Keegan
I didn’t get to see his face because he had a sand-bag on. All the blokes were running past and punching him in the head, because they were angry at… that was the first sign of their anger, I see him have massive rocks thrown at his head, and yeah his face must have been pissing out with blood underneath that sandbag.

Reporter John Sweeney
Keegan says the prisoner, hooded and cuffed, was taken down to a drainage ditch.

Mark Keegan
I watched him nearly get drowned. There was a massive ditch and he was on his knees in there. Every time he kept crying out he was knocked to the floor with his hands tied behind his back. Then they’d leave him for a bit until he started squirming, lift him up again until he started moaning again.

Reporter John Sweeney
Keegan and the prisoner were taken to Abu Naji in the same vehicle.

Mark Keegan
After that I didn’t see him, when I got let out. From what I’ve been told he got let loose. The police decided to let him go. Makes you wonder why we didn’t shoot him.

Reporter John Sweeney
Our evidence points to this prisoner being Hamza Al-Maliki. His friends say he is now deaf as a result of his beating. The MoD say a preliminary review of accounts of mistreatment at Danny Boy didn’t merit investigation.

John Sweeney
The war of words about the Battle of Danny Boy steps up over the question – how many Iraqis were captured alive? The MoD says emphatically nine.We’ve spoken to seven of the nine who say there were more of them and that they believe some of their number entered the base alive and left it dead.

Reporter John Sweeney
Panorama went to Iraq, Jordan and Turkey to hear their stories. Their accounts are harrowing, but in weighing up their evidence we must remember that they are now suing for compensation. They are also pursuing a separate claim to force an official inquiry into the treatment of prisoners. Abbas al Riddah says this is him in the soldier’s picture.

Abbas al Riddah
The British made promises and broke them. They haven’t done anything for Iraq. They did the same as Saddam did. They arrested. They killed.

Reporter John Sweeney
Of the nine, two were acquitted and seven jailed for attacking the British. The Iraqis say they were not fighters in the Madhi Army but innocent farmers and civilians caught in the crossfire. It’s impossible for us to be sure. The prisoners describe a macabre journey back to base.

Mahdi Jassim Abdullah
They brought injured and wounded people and threw them in with me. They were screaming with pain with their wounds.

Reporter John Sweeney
A British Army account of the battle records that an intelligence officer took pictures at Abu Naji of the Iraqi dead, some of whom were clearly fighters. He noted: The blank staring eyes won’t stay with me nearly as long as the weirdly unpleasant smell. There was a mix, some kitted out in Madhi Army uniforms. Once at Abu Naji, the nine were passed on to other interrogators and guards. They were held in disused toilets, their blindfolds replaced with blacked out goggles and then, they claim, the beatings began. They could see virtually nothing but they could hear. One of the prisoners, Hussein Fadhil Abbass, tried to work out how many live prisoners were there.

Hussein Fadhil Abbas
You could tell from their voices there were about 15 people or so. Their cries were really loud, one of them would say: ‘oh my head’ The other would cry about his belly, and another about his, moaning like that. I heard the noise of footsteps and the shouts and screaming of about five to six soldiers. They came in and then it started …there was the sound of choking! Like this: kkkkkhh khhhhh!

Reporter John Sweeney
Before he was blindfolded at Danny Boy, Fadhil said he saw his friend Hamid al Sweady among the prisoners. Hamid had a minor wound to his leg. Two other witnesses have told us they saw Hamid alive on the battlefield. Later at Abu Naji, Fadhil, now blindfolded and cuffed, says he managed to speak to his friend.

Hussein Fadhil Abbas
I called out to Hamid and said: ‘Hamid are you there?’ He answered back and said Yes. That night the prisoners say they were taken away one by one for interrogation.

Hussein Jabbari Ali
He said to me: You are a liar. And then I heard him loading his hand-gun and he fired two rounds towards me. I don’t know whether he shot above me or to my side. On the face of it a mock execution. Others hearing more shots feared they were listening to their friends being killed.

Mahdi Jassim Abdullah
During the night I heard about 4 or 5 shots. I could hear them from my cell. I thought they had started executing us. I thought they would execute us one by one.

Hussein Fadhil Abbas
Then there was the sound of gun shots. Takh Takh! About 5 to 6. Then there was a very loud scream. The sound one makes when one is in great pain, or had something broken or something like that.

Hussein Jabbari Ali – blindfolded and cuffed – has made a statement that at one point he was held in a room where he could hear the sounds of soldiers - and other prisoners.

Hussein Jabbari Ali
And then a sound started as if someone was being tortured. And he was screaming and calling for help: father! Brother. I was imagining what they were doing to that human there to make him cry so loud and in such agony… I don’t know what they were doing to him.

Reporter John Sweeney
The MoD says the military police interviewed 200 witnesses from both sides and found no evidence of abuse. They say that none of the nine who now complain made the same allegations at the time. Later that night, Fadhil says he tried to speak again to his friend Hamid.

Hussein Fadhil Abbas
I waited about half an hour scared and worried. But then I decided to call out to Hamid. So I started calling. Hamid! Hamid! There was nothing.

Reporter John Sweeney
Hamid, who Iraqi witnesses say survived the battle with a minor leg wound, was among those delivered dead the next day. This footage was shot by local cameramen. But were some of the deaths due to what the prisoners heard during the night or had all these people died on the battlefield? The evidence is not clear. Khudar Al Sweady, a hospital scientist, is Hamid’s uncle. One of the first body bags he opened contained his nephew. Khudar, in the blue shirt, grieves over Hamid’s body.

Khudar Al Sweady
I tried to straighten his neck when I washed him but it fell down to one side. And when I tried again, it fell to the other side. What does this mean? It means the neck was broken. It was execution by hanging. Q: He could have been killed in battle? We don’t know for certain. A: I’m very certain he wasn’t.

Reporter John Sweeney
He believes the mark on his neck was caused by a wire or rope. There is a mass funeral, but Hamid’s death certificate also records a gunshot wound to the neck – and there’s blood on the shroud. It also says that Hamid suffered ‘complete facial mutilation’, which seems wrong. When and how he died is neither agreed nor clear. Two days after the battle along with others Khudar buried his nephew. The Iraqis allege eyes were gouged out, some victims shot in the head at close range, and others had suspicious neck injuries. We showed footage, much of it too graphic to broadcast, to a pathologist. He said without full post mortems, it was impossible to say how and when these men died. So these images are not proof of unlawful killing. It wasn’t long before these distressing scenes were exploited by the Mahdi Army. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t serious questions to answer. One of the bodies was that of Heider Al Lami. When the corpse was examined in hospital there was an injury which was not expected. Heider’s death certificate records his penis was severed. The MoD say their investigations concerning Heider al Lami and Hamid Al Sweady are ongoing. But

MOD statement
There is currently no evidence to support claims of alleged mutilation of bodies at or near Danny Boy, or of torture or execution at Camp Abu Naji.

Reporter John Sweeney
The military police concluded these were typical battle injuries made worse by transporting the dead. Mark Keegan, former soldier.

Mark Keegan
They’re having to stand on the body, they had nowhere else to stand and their feet were just going through their chests and things like that. Obviously that’s where the story comes from about how the blokes were mistreating the dead bodies.

Reporter John Sweeney
The evidence of we’ve heard is clearly worthy of investigation and fits the pattern from the Baha Mousa case. But that was a single death. And we’ve seen no proof that anyone was killed at Abu Naji let alone the 20 dead claimed by the lawyers for the Iraqis: the worst possible interpretation of a troubling but confusing incident. Phil Shiner, Public Interest Lawyer

Phil Shiner
British soldiers may well have been responsible for the execution of up to 20 Iraqi civilians, the torture of many of these 20 before death, the torture of nine other survivors and horrific bodily mutilations prior to some of the executions. Questions?

Reporter John Sweeney
In absence of post mortems how can you tell the difference between battlefield injuries and these allegations of torture?

Phil Shiner
First I’d remind you that neither Martin nor I have said that we know what happened. We say that on balance it looks to us from all the angles that our clients versions are likely to be true. These bodies need to be exhumed and subjected to a proper post mortem.

Reporter John Sweeney
Whatever the truth of the aftermath of Danny Boy, had the British Army stuck to its old rules on the five techniques it might find it easier to brush aside claims like these. Britain’s most recognisable soldier, speaking generally rather than about this incident, says that the Army’s best defence is the law. General Sir General Sir Mike Jackson, Chief of the General Staff, 2003-2006.

General Sir Mike Jackson
I would look, what are the facts? if they make an allegation the allegation gets investigated, people don’t always say truthfully as they might such things as I’m afraid some of the court cases revealed but I would say that any allegation of ill treatment should be investigated and the due process of law must take place.

Presenter Jeremy Vine
John Sweeney reporting. The case for an independent judicial inquiry into the allegations is scheduled to be heard in the high court before the end of July. The MoD says its re-opened investigation continues.

END

CREDITS

John Sweeney: Reporter
Michael Burke: Camera
Mark Williams: Sound
Steve Organ: Links Camera
Billy Young: Links Sound
Dom McMahon: Online Editor
Andy Sears: Dubbing Mixer
Len Freeman: Web Producer
Eamonn Walsh: Film Research
Nick Todd: Production Manager
Chris Stott: Post Production Co-ordinator
Alison Cooke: Production Manager
Livvy Haydock Andy James: Production Assistants
Rana Haddad Kinda Haddad: Translators
Arlen Harris: Co Producer
David Monaghan: Producer
Callum Macrae: Director
Frank Simmonds Ingrid Kelly: Deputy Editors
Editor: Sandy Smith