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British Army makes more effort to win over Iraqis


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The Ministry of Defence has confirmed it is investigating 33 cases of alleged abuse, including rape and torture, of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers. The lawyer representing the alleged victims, Phil Shiner, said there could be hundreds of uninvestigated claims of abuse.One claimant alleges that soldiers based the abuse they allegedly subjected him to on photographs of the abuse at the notorious US detention centre at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, the Independent reported. In one case, British soldiers are accused of piling up Iraqi prisoners on top of one another before subjecting them to electric shocks.Shiner served a pre-action protocol letter on the Ministry of Defence last week and is asking for a judicial review of the cases. In the letter, it was reported, Shiner said the allegations raised questions of collusion between Britain and the US over the ill-treatment of Iraqis."Given the history of the UK's involvement in the development of these techniques alongside the US, it is deeply concerning that there appears to be strong similarities between instances of the use of sexual humiliation," he told the paper.The Iraqi human rights campaigner Mazin Younis, who has been investigating allegations of abuse by British troops since 2004, said today: "It was quite shocking actually, that we started seeing a pattern very similar to Abu Ghraib where sex or sexual humiliation is used, like playing porn movies in the corridors while the prisoners are in their solitary cells, especially at prayer times."Then more serious stuff started coming up, when we realised some female soldiers were exposing themselves in front of prisoners while they were in toilets or showers. On one occasion, one female soldier tried to have sex with one of the detainees while he was resting after an operation in a hospital bed."Shiner said that since the British withdrawal from Basra in southern Iraq in the summer, a host of abuse allegations had been made dating back to 2003.He said: "I have it on good authority that there are hundreds of cases that are going uninvestigated. But if you are an Iraqi and terrible things have happened to you then how would you know that we have a judicial system in this country to deal with it? My guess is that many of them will remain buried."One Iraqi claims that he was raped by two British soldiers in 2003 when he was 16, while others claim they were stripped naked, abused and photographed. Both male and female soldiers are alleged to have taken part in abuse.Bill Rammell, the armed forces minister, rejected suggestions that a full public inquiry should be held into British troops' behaviour in Iraq. He said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that "there is not any evidence of endemic abuse within the armed forces". The minister said about seven of the 33 cases under investigation had been reported within the last month, while the rest "date back significantly beyond that period". Over 120,000 British troops have served in Iraq and the vast majority have conducted themselves to the highest standards of behaviour, displaying integrity and selfless commitment. Only a tiny number of individuals have been shown to have fallen short of our high standards. Allegations of this nature are taken very seriously, however allegations must not be taken as fact and investigations must be allowed to take their course without judgments being made prematurely," Rammell said.Younis said many alleged victims had waited years before coming forward out of fear. "People were quite scared of the British, because the level of abuses was so high that people feared that the British could detain them," he told the BBC. They would hear that their friends or relatives had probably been detained for years without charges, they have probably been abused. They all feared that the British would come back and punish them. Now the British are out."The Guardian reported in September that the Royal Military police had launched a criminal investigation into allegations that British soldiers repeatedly raped and mutilated an 18-year-old Iraqi civilian who was working as a labourer at Camp Breadbasket, in Basra, the scene of other abuse allegations.The man, who wishes to remain unnamed, alleged that two soldiers raped him, subjecting him to a 15-minute ordeal, then slashed him with a knife. He was treated in hospital for cuts and the military police are understood to have secured the medical records. The victim said he was so traumatised he tried to kill himself.Shiner also represents the interests of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi who died after being taken into UK military custody. Mousa and nine other civilians were arrested at a hotel in Basra in September 2003. The 26-year-old father-of-two died the following day, having suffered 93 separate injuries, including fractured ribs and a broken nose.Corporal Donald Payne became the first member of the British armed forces to be convicted of a war crime when he pleaded guilty at a court martial in September 2006 to inhumanely treating civilians. He was dismissed from the army and sentenced to one year in a civilian jail.At the ongoing public inquiry into Mousa's death, a former British soldier admitted for the first time that he saw Payne and Private Aaron Cooper kicking and hitting the Iraqi shortly before he died. Garry Reader told a hearing on Monday how he had tried to resuscitate Mousa.
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And we should be nice to guys in a war situation yeah, f*ck this stuff makes me feel sick.
Alot of people on here don't believe the war is right.
And? wha else can they do?
Who? The soldiers?
obviously.. speaking to my family and pals who have been there done that.. its the only way, its the same guys that would be shooting rockets and sh*t at them otherwise. but yeah lets be nice to be p.c <_< <_<
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And we should be nice to guys in a war situation yeah, f*ck this stuff makes me feel sick.
Alot of people on here don't believe the war is right.
And? wha else can they do?
Who? The soldiers?
obviously.. speaking to my family and pals who have been there done that.. its the only way, its the same guys that would be shooting rockets and sh*t at them otherwise. but yeah lets be nice to be p.c <_< <_<
I agree. Others do not. Most of them don't really know what they're talking about.
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