Another Abu Ghraib? Iraqis Abused by UK Occupation Troops

British occupation soldiers forced an Iraqi detainee to wear an orange jump suit and told him that he was to be executed at the US-run Guantanamo Bay camp, according to allegations in a report Monday. The 23-year-old man said he was beaten and sexually abused and flown to a British detention centre in southern Iraq which he believed was the “war on terror” camp in Cuba, the Independent said.

The man’s case is among accusations being investigated by Britain’s Ministry of Defense that soldiers tortured Iraqi civilians, including the abuse of a 16-year-old boy at knifepoint. A British medic was also accused of records of abuse.

Phil Shiner, the lawyer representing the Iraqis, said in a radio interview with the BBC that these cases should be examined in public to determine whether there is evidence to support the claims. He also called abuse in the army “systemic” and said: “The few bad apples thesis does not work ,,, the whole barrel is rotten.” Shiner said he was not seeking compensation, but justice for those who had been abused and tortured.

The British ministry alleged on Friday it has launched “formal investigations” into the abuse, but they must be allowed to be carried out “without judgments being made prematurely” claiming that “only a tiny number had fallen short of this standard.”

About 33 cases of abuse had been reported and dozens of Iraqis have leveled accusations of brutal and humiliating sexual abuse by their captors, stirring memories of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq run by the United States.

The man was a security guard employed to patrol streets of the southern Iraqi town of Amara, when in 2006 he was arrested by four soldiers. He said he was beaten and taken to a British base in southern Iraq, where he suffered more abuse. “I was (later) given a dark orange prisoners outfit to wear… (which) is worn by those who will be executed. I started screaming,” the man said in his statement. “I thought I might be in Guantanamo… but I have no idea how far it is from Iraq. I have heard if I went there I would not see anyone again.” It is unclear why the man, who was later released, was arrested.

Doubts have been raised about the timing of the new allegations, as many were made months or even years after the abuse.

Mazin Younis, the Iraqi human rights activist working on the case, told the BBC the people he met had “all feared that the British would come back and punish them. Now the British are out [of Iraq].”
Younis also told Al Jazeera: “And some of them are telling us even now that they’re hesitant to come forward because they have no guarantee that their names will not be passed to the Iraq side or to the Americans who have taken over Basra and they’ll be re-arrested.”

Notes/Sources:
1.Batoul Wehba,Al Manar