Whatever happened to that inquiry anyway?
"Lack of training of UK troops blamed in death of Iraqi man; But inquiry didn’t find evidence of widespread abuse" September 09, 2011|By Cassandra Vinograd, Associated Press
LONDON - The brutal death of an Iraqi man held by British soldiers months after the US-led invasion of the country was an “appalling episode of serious gratuitous violence’’ and partly a result of the United Kingdom’s failure to properly train troops on interrogation techniques, a report said yesterday.
The inquiry into 26-year-old Baha Mousa’s killing underscores a sordid episode in British military history, one that gave the United Kingdom its first convicted war criminal. But the 1,400-page report stops short of finding systematic, widespread abuses, and officials say many issues raised already have been dealt with.
Mousa was working at a hotel in the southern Iraqi city of Basra that was raided by soldiers looking for weapons in September 2003. It was a particularly sensitive time in Iraq, as the ousted dictator, Saddam Hussein, and many of his loyalists were still at large.
The Iraqi was taken to a British base, where he sustained 93 injuries, including fractured ribs and a broken nose. An autopsy said he died of asphyxia, caused by a stress position that soldiers forced him to maintain.
Britain’s defense ministry later apologized for the mistreatment of Mousa and nine other Iraqis and paid a $4.8 million settlement. Six soldiers were cleared of wrongdoing at a court martial in 2007. A seventh pleaded guilty to inhumanely treating Iraqi civilians and served a year in jail.
Related: Occupation Iraq: Empires Never Have to Say Sorry
The inquiry was requested by Mousa’s family and also covered the general subject of British military abuses of Iraqi prisoners....
The report also criticizes a “corporate failure’’ at the Ministry of Defense in allowing interrogation techniques that had been banned by the United Kingdom in 1972 - such as hooding and forcing prisoners to stand in uncomfortable positions - to be used by the soldiers in Iraq....
Yeah, it's called torture and have you ever noticed our -- and I only use the term because I am a citizen of a government that tortures in my name and with my condemnation -- torture is always minimized while that of official enemies is magnified if not distorted or lies?
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