British war crimes

War crimes are acts committed during an armed conflict that violates the laws and customs of war (established by the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907), or acts that are grave breaches of the Geneva Convention and Additional Protocol I. The British law-of-war manual utilizes the 1945 definition from the Nuremberg Charter, which defines a war crime as "Violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public of private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity."^[1]

British war crimes are acts that have breeched, or have alleged to have breeched, the above definition, committed by the armed forces of the United Kingdom, from its formation in 1707 to the present day, during armed conflict. Actions labeled as war crimes range from independent actions of individual soldiers, such as the abuse of prisoners during the Iraq War, to controversial and debated officially sanctioned actions such as the bombing of Dresden in 1945.

India

During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, crimes were reportedly perpetrated by British forces. These included widespread summary executions, committed particularly by forces under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel James George Smith Neill and Major Renaud. Following the murder of Europeans in Fatehpur, Neill ordered all villages beside the Grand Trunk Road to be burned and their inhabitants to be killed by hanging.^[2] In addition, following the recapture of Delhi, civilians were indiscriminately murdered. This included the summary execution of the princes of Delhi.^[3]

Boxer Rebellion

During the Boxer Rebellion, including the aftermath of the Battle of Peking, troops from Britain and seven other nations of the alliance engaged in widespread looting, torturing, raping, and killing while stationing in China. Author Bertram Lenox Simpson, who was in China at the time, reported that he came across "a whole company of savage-looking British and Indian troops" molesting a group of female converts "green-white with fear" while a lady missionary vainly tried to beat them off with an umbrella. British leaders and generals even justified their looting by pointing that looting by its troops "was carried on in the most orderly manner and the houses of all those known to be friendly were protected." However, one British officer noted, "that it is one of the unwritten laws of war that a city which does not surrender at the last and is taken by storm is looted." For the rest of 1900-1901, the British held loot auctions in front everyday except Sunday in front of the main-gate to the British Legation at Peking. Many foreigners, including Sir Claude Maxwell MacDonald and Lady Ethel MacDonald, George Ernest Morrison of The Times, and American diplomat Herbert G. Squiers were active bidder among the crowd. Many of the things stolen from China by British and foreign forces ended up winding back to Europe.^[4][5]

Boer War

During the Second Boer War, concentration camps were established initially for use by refugees.^[6] As part of the strategy to defeat the Boers, farms were destroyed including the systematic destruction of crops and slaughtering of livestock, the burning down of homesteads, poisoning of wells and salting of fields. This was to prevent the Boers from resupplying from a home base. As a result, 45 tented camps were created for Boers and 64 for black Africans. As a result of the British policy, tens of thousands of women and children were forcibly moved into the concentration camps via open cattle trucks in freezing rain during winter, without being given adequate food and water.^[6] 107,000 people were interned in the camps. Of which, 27,927 Boer died along with an unknown number of black Africans^[7]

The use of concentration camps has been cited as one of the earliest uses of this method by a modern power.^[8][9] Many Afrikaners consider the situation to amount to a war crime.^[10][11] On 14 June 1901, Leader of the Opposition Henry Campbell-Bannerman declared to Parliament "When is a war not a war? When it is waged in South Africa by methods of barbarism."^[12]

World War I

Baralong incidents

On 19 August 1915, the German submarine U-27 was sunk by the Q-ship HMS Baralong. All German survivors were summarily executed by Baralong´s crew on the orders of Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert, the captain of the ship. The shooting was reported to the media by American citizens who were on board the Nicosia, a British freighter loaded with war supplies, which was stopped by U-27 just minutes before the incident.^[13]

On 24 September, Baralong destroyed U-41, which was in the process of sinking the cargo ship Urbino. According to Karl Goetz, the submarine's commander, Baralong continued to fly the U.S. flag after firing on U-41 and then rammed the lifeboat - carrying the German survivors - sinking it.^[14]

Chemical weapons in warfare

The use of poison gas, as a weapon, was introduced by Imperial Germany on 31 January 1915 during the Battle of Bolimov. Later, all major belligerents (including the United Kingdom) subsequently employed similar weapons. The use of chemical weapons in warfare was in direct violation of the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare, which prohibited their use.^[15][16]

Irish War of Independence

On 9 August 1920, the British Parliament passed the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act during the Anglo-Irish War. It replaced the trial by jury by courts-martial by regulation for those areas in Ireland where IRA activity was prevalent.^[17] To break the Irish Republican Army, Winston Churchill, then UK Secretary of State for War, suggested recruiting World War I veterans into paramilitary units. Lloyd George agreed and advertisements were filed in British newspapers. Former enlisted men were formed into the Black and Tans, so called because of their mixture of British Army and police uniforms. Veterans who had held officers rank were formed into the Auxiliary Division, who were better paid and received better supplies. ^{[citation needed]}

Kevin Barry, an 18-year-old medical student and Irish Republican Army paramilitary, was captured following a gun battle between IRA paramilitaries and British soldiers, which resulted in the deaths of three British soldiers, Privates Humphries, Washington and Whitehead, at least two of whom were around the same age as Barry.^[18] Following his capture, Barry was interrogated and allegedly subjected to violence and threats of murder by British soldiers.^[18] The British Government denied POW status to IRA paramilitaries and Barry was reportedly interrogated under torture by British servicemen without access to a solicitor or civilian constable. He refused to name the others present at the ambush, and was subsequently charged and convicted of first degree murder by a military tribunal on 28 October 1919, and executed by hanging on 1 November 1919.^[19] John Ainsworth, author of Kevin Barry, the Incident at Monk's bakery and the Making of an Irish Republican Legend, has pointed out that Barry had been captured by the British not as a uniformed soldier but disguised as a civilian and in possession of flat-nosed "Dum-dum" bullets, in contravention of the Hague Convention of 1899.^[20]

Bloody Sunday began when Michael Collins' assassin squad, known as "The Twelve Apostles", assassinated 13 British intelligence agents, including most of the "Cairo Gang". That same afternoon, British security forces opened fire on a crowd attending a Gaelic football match in Croke Park, killing 14 civilians.^[21]

Iraqi revolt (1920)

During the first years of British rule in Iraq, numerous attacks on civilians were carried out, including village burning and indiscriminate bombing.^[22]

World War II

Crimes against enemy combatants, civilians, and civilian property

During the Burma Campaign, there are recorded instances of British troops removing gold teeth from dead Japanese troops and displaying Japanese skulls as trophies.^[23]

In violation of the Hague Conventions, British line of communication troops conducted small scale looting in the French towns of Bayeux and Caen, following their liberation.^[24] On 21 April 1945, British soldiers randomly selected and burned two cottages in Seedorf, Germany, in reprisal against local civilians who had hidden German soldiers in their cellars.^[25]

On 23 May 1945, a number of British soldiers - under the pretext that they were searching for Heinrich Himmler - held Prince Ferdinand of Holstein, along with his family and staff, at gunpoint in the courtyard of Glücksburg Castle, in Schleswig-Holstein. The troops then proceeded to loot the castle, stealing jewelry; some of which, was later recovered. The prince asserted that these soldiers also desecrated 38 coffins in the castle's mausoleum.^[26]

An MI19 prisoner of war facility, known as the "London Cage", was utilized during and immediately after the war. This facility has been the subject of allegations of torture.^[27] The Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre, in occupied Germany, managed by the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre, was the subject of an official inquiry in 1947. It found that there was "mental and physical torture during the interrogations" and that "personal property of the prisoners were stolen".^[28]

Rapes

Between 1943 and December 1945, during the Italian Campaign, white British soldiers raped eight women. A further nineteen attempted rapes were recorded. A variety of Belgian and British sources indicate that isolated examples of rape and sexual harassment also took place during the Allied invasion of Sicily. Rape also took place during the British advance towards Germany.^[29] Reports also exist of "indecent assault and offences" committed against Belgian and Dutch children. A number of servicemen were convicted of these crimes, while fraternizing with Dutch and Belgian families in December 1944.^[30] Rape also occurred once British forces had entered Germany. For example, on a single day in April 1945, three women in Neustadt were raped.^[29] An attempted gang-rape of two girls took place in the village of Oyle, near Nienburg. This attack ended with the death of one of the women, when a soldier (it is not clear if unintentionally or otherwise) discharged his gun, striking her in the neck.^[31] In the summer of 1945, two drunken British soldiers stormed into a farmhouse in Klagenfurt with a drawn revolver when there were just two women present. The older of the two women was forced to go upstairs while the other, an 18-year-old girl, was raped by one of the soldiers.^[32]

According to historian Sean Longden, rape was a major issue for the Royal Military Police, although some officers treated this behaviour with leniency.^[33]

Unrestricted submarine warfare

On 4 May 1940, in response to Germany's intensive unrestricted submarine warfare, during the Battle of the Atlantic and its invasion of Denmark and Norway, the Royal Navy conducted its own unrestricted submarine campaign. The Admiralty announced that all vessels, in the Skagerrak, were to be sunk on sight without warning. This was contrary to the terms of the Second London Naval Treaty.^[34][35]

HMS Torbay incident

In July 1941, the submarine HMS Torbay (under the command of Anthony Miers) was based in the Mediterranean where it sank several German ships. On two occasions, once off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt, and the other off the coast of Crete, the crew attacked and killed dozens of shipwrecked German sailors and troops. None of the shipwrecked survivors posed a major threat to Torbay's crew. Miers made no attempt to hide his actions, and reported them in his official logs. He received a strongly worded reprimand from his superiors following the first incident. Meir's actions violated the Hague Convention of 1907, which banned the killing of shipwreck survivors under any circumstances.^[36][37]

Bombing of Dresden

The British, with other allied nations (mainly the U.S.) carried out air raids against enemy cities during World War II, including the bombing of the German city of Dresden, which killed more than 25,000 people. While "no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property" from aerial attack was adopted before the war,^[38] the Hague Conventions did prohibit the bombardment of undefended towns. Allied forces inquiry concluded that an air attack on Dresden was militarily justified on the grounds the city was defended.^[39]

This city was filled with refugees fleeing the oncoming Red Army.^[40][41] When asked whether the bombing of Dresden was a war crime, British historian Frederick Taylor replied: "I really don't know. From a practical point of view, rules of war are something of a grey area. It was pretty borderline stuff in terms of the extent of the raid and the amount of force used."^[42] Historian Donald Bloxham claims that "the bombing of Dresden on 13–14 February 1945 was a war crime". He further argues that there was a strong prima facie for trying Winston Churchill among others and that there is theoretical case that he could have been found guilty. "This should be a sobering thought. If, however it is also a startling one, this is probably less the result of widespread understanding of the nuance of international law and more because in the popular mind 'war criminal', like 'paedophile' or 'terrorist', has developed into a moral rather than a legal categorisation."^[43]

Malaya

On 12 December 1948, during the Malayan Emergency, the Batang Kali massacre took place which involved the killing of 24 villagers. The official British position was that these villagers were insurgents attempting to escape, and that detailed investigation into the situation was not possible due to a lack of evidence. Six of the eight British soldiers involved were interviewed under caution by detectives. They corroborated accounts that the villagers were unarmed, were not insurgents nor trying to escape, and had been unlawfully killed on the order of the two sergeants in command. The sergeants denied the allegations. The Government's position was that if anyone is to be held responsible, it should be the Sultan of Selangor.^{[44][45][46][47]}

Throughout the conflict, it was common by British troops to detain and torture villagers who were suspected in aiding the insurgents while attempting to search for them. Brian Lapping said that there was “some vicious conduct by the British forces, who routinely beat up Chinese squatters when they refused, or possibly were unable, to give information” about the insurgents. There were also cases of bodies of dead guerrillas being exhibited in public. The Scotsman newspaper lauded these tactics as a good practice since “simple-minded peasants are told and come to believe that the communist leaders are invulnerable”. Due to the fact the British were unable to distinguish from friend to foe as they went deep into the jungles and tired and living in fear of insurgent attacks, they often shoot anything that moves. A young British officer commented that: “We were shooting people. We were killing them...This was raw savage success. It was butchery. It was horror.” British units also compete each other in competition who was going to kill more people or not. One British army conscript recalled that “when we had an officer who did come out with us on patrol I realised that he was only interested in one thing: killing as many people as possible”. British forces also booby-trapped jungle food stores, burn villages, secretly supplied self-detonating grenades and bullets to the insurgents to instantly kill the user, and shot civilians and detainees, either they attempted to flee from them on the grounds that they could give the insurgents valuable assistance to continue to fight against British forces or that simply because they refuse to give intelligence to British forces. These tactics created strain relations between civilians and British forces in Malaya as they were counterproductive in generating the one resource critical in a counterinsurgency, good intelligence.

Decapitation and mutilation of insurgents by British forces were also common as a way to identify dead guerrillas when it was not possible to bring their corpses in from the jungle. A photograph of a Royal Marine commando holding two insurgents’ heads caused a public outcry in April 1952. The Colonial Office privately noted that “there is no doubt that under international law a similar case in wartime would be a war crime”.^[48][49][50]

As part of the Briggs' Plan devised by British General Sir Harold Briggs, 500,000 people (roughly ten percent of Malaya's population) were eventually removed from the land, had tens of thousands of their homes destroyed, and interned in guarded camps called "New Villages". The intent of this measure was to inflict collective punishments on villages where people were deemed to be aiding the insurgents. While considered necessary, some of the cases involving the widespread destruction went beyond justification of military necessity. This practice was prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and customary international law which stated that the destruction of property must not happen unless rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.^{[51][48][49][48]}

Kenya

During an eight-year conflict in Kenya from 1952 to 1960 in which Britain sought to restore order on its prized African possession, amid a vicious insurgency fueled by land shortages in its central highlands, white settlers and British troops suspended civil liberties within the country. Thrown off their best land and deprived of political rights, the Kikuyu people, Kenya's largest ethnic group, started to organise - some of them violently - against colonial rule. The British responded by driving up to between 320,000-450,000 of them into concentration camps. Most of the remainder - more than a million - were held in "enclosed villages". Although some were Mau Mau guerillas, many were victims of collective punishment that colonial authorities imposed on large areas of the country. Thousands suffered beatings and sexual assaults during "screenings" intended to extract information about the Mau Mau threat. Later, prisoners suffered even worse mistreatment in an attempt to force them to renounce their allegiance to the insurgency and to obey commands. Significant numbers were murdered; official accounts describe some prisoners being roasted alive. Prisoners were questioned with the help of "slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes". British soldiers used a "metal castrating instrument" to cut off testicles and fingers. "By the time I cut his balls off," one settler boasted, "he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket." The soldiers were told they could shoot anyone they liked "provided they were black". According to David Anderson, the British hanged over 1,090 suspected rebels: far more than the French executed in Algeria during the Algerian War. It was found out that over half of them executed were not rebels at all. Thousands more were summarily executed by British soldiers, who claimed they had "failed to halt" when challenged.^[52][53][54] Among the detainees who suffered severe mistreatment was Hussein Onyango Obama, the grandfather of U.S. President Barack Obama. According to his widow, British soldiers forced pins into his fingernails and buttocks and squeezed his testicles between metal rods and two others were castrated.^[55]

The Hola massacre was an incident during the conflict in Kenya against British colonial rule at a colonial detention camp in Hola, Kenya. By January 1959 the camp had a population of 506 detainees of whom 127 were held in a secluded “closed camp”. This more remote camp near Garissa, eastern Kenya, was reserved for the most uncooperative of the detainees. They often refused, even when threats of force were made, to join in the colonial "rehabilitation process" or perform manual labour or obey colonial orders. The camp commandant outlined a plan that would force 88 of the detainees to bend to work. On 3 March 1959, the camp commandant put this plan into action – as a result, 11 detainees were clubbed to death by guards.^[56] 77 surviving detainees sustained serious permanent injuries.^[57] The British government accepts that the colonial administration tortured detainees, but denies liability.^[58]

Worst of all, the British knew that the brutal mistreatment of Kikuyu was going on and chose to turn blind eye to it.^[59] In June 1957, Eric Griffith-Jones, the attorney general of the British administration in Kenya, wrote to the governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, detailing the way the regime of abuse at the colony's detention camps was being subtly altered. He said that the mistreatment of the detainees is "distressingly reminiscent of conditions in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia". Despite this, he said that in order for abuse to remain legal, Mau Mau suspects must be beaten mainly on their upper body, "vulnerable parts of the body should not be struck, particularly the spleen, liver or kidneys", and it was important that "those who administer violence ... should remain collected, balanced and dispassionate". He also reminded the governor that "If we are going to sin," he wrote, "we must sin quietly."^[60][55]

Cyprus

There were abuses committed by British forces towards detainees suspected of being members of the EOKA as well as actual EOKA prisoners during the Cyprus Emergency. In 2012, veterans of the EOKA sued the British government, claiming that they were subject to brutal treatment and torture while in custody of British forces during the 1955-1959 conflict. Vasos Sophocleous, president of EOKA Fighters' Federation, the group bringing the action, says he still suffers from the abuse he says he received at the hands of the British. "I was tortured 10 or 15 times over 17 days, all types of torture, of the body, of the mind, everything. I cannot describe them; it's not easy for me to speak about them. I still suffer. I feel pain in my back. I feel pain in my knees. I still cannot hear out of my left ear. If there is, and I believe that there is, a real democratic court, then I'm very hopeful that we will win because I believe the court will do their duty. They have admitted already, 40 or 50 years later, that they tortured people in Cyprus." Birmingham-based solicitor Kevin Conroy, who is acting for several EOKA fighters, said: "What you've got here is an insurrection that took place in the 1950s and the people were detained. I'm not talking about people who were convicted: two detention camps were set up, like the internment in Northern Ireland in 1971. That is what was happening in Cyprus. People were being detained on suspicion of being members of Eoka, not convicted. I'm no apologist for EOKA – far from it, it was horrible – but while people are in custody, there's a rule of law. If you're tortured or assaulted while in custody, regardless of who you are or what you've done, that's wrong."^[61][62][63]

Northern Ireland

At least 155 civilians were unlawfully killed by British armed forces during the Troubles.^[64] There is also evidence of collusion between Loyalist paramilitaries and British security forces throughout the conflict,^[65] which was particularly exposed by the 1975 Miami Showband massacre^[66] and the 1989 killings of Pat Finucane and Loughlin Maginn.^[67]

Various unarmed male civilians (some of whom were named during a 2013 television programme) were shot, two of them (Patrick McVeigh, Daniel Rooney) fatally, in 1972, allegedly by the Military Reaction Force (MRF), an undercover military unit tasked with targeting Irish Republican Army paramilitaries during the last installment of the Troubles. Two brothers, whose names and casualty status were not mentioned in an article regarding the same matter in The Irish Times, ran a fruit stall in west Belfast, and were shot after being mistaken for IRA paramilitaries.^[68]

"We were hunting down hardcore baby-killers, terrorists, people that would kill you without even thinking about it ... If you had a player who was a well-known shooter who carried out quite a lot of assassinations ... then he had to be taken out", several soldiers stated during interviews with the British news series Panorama.^[69]

Bloody Sunday (Irish: Domhnach na Fola)—sometimes called the Bogside Massacre—was an incident on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland, in which 26 civil-rights protesters and bystanders were shot by soldiers of the British Army. Thirteen males, seven of whom were teenagers, died immediately or soon after, while the death of another man four-and-a-half months later was attributed to the injuries he received on that day. Two protesters were also injured when they were run down by military vehicles.

Evidence shows that the British Army subjected prisoners in Northern Ireland to torture and waterboarding during interrogations in the 1970s. Liam Holden was wrongfully arrested by British forces for the murder of a British soldier and became the last person in the United Kingdom to be sentenced to hang after being convicted in 1973, largely on the basis of an unsigned confession produced by torture.^[70] His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he spent 17 years behind bars. On 21 June 2012, in the light of CCRC investigations which confirmed that the methods used to extract confessions were unlawful,^[71] Holden had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal in Belfast, at the age of 58.^[72][73] Former Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) interrogators during the Troubles admitted that beatings, the sleep deprivation, waterboarding, and the other tortures were systematic, and were, at times, sanctioned at a very high level within the force.^[74]

The British Army and the RUC also operated under a shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland, under which suspects were alleged to have been deliberately killed without any attempt to arrest them. In four separate cases considered by the European court of human rights - involving the deaths of ten IRA men, a Sinn Fein member and a civilian - seven judges ruled unanimously that Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights guaranteeing a right to life had been violated by Britain.^[75]

Falklands War

In 1993, Argentina's president, Carlos Menem, ordered an investigation into allegations that Argentine soldiers captured during the Battle of Mount Longdon had been executed by British paratroopers. The statements were said to confirm seven executions.^[76]

Former corporal José Carrizo claimed British paratroopers shot him in the head after he had surrendered.^[77] Carrizo's reports were confirmed by another soldier named as Santiago Mambrin.^[78] Then commander of land forces in the Falklands, former Brigadier-General Oscar Jofre pointed out that "I never heard of anything like this happening, throughout the war or after it. If it happened, it was something that happens in every war, not accepting surrender through tiredness or fear or because of the loss of comrades. Of course it is not the norm, but since soldiers are men they can deviate from the norm."^[79]

In 1994, The Independent (newspaper), using eyewitness statements from both Argentine and British soldiers, revealed new evidence about alleged British war crimes. Nestor Flores, stated that he had seen British soldiers shoot a wounded, unarmed soldier called Quintana; stab to death with a bayonet another one named Gramissi; and toss a grenade into a foxhole where a soldier surnamed Delgado was lying.^[80] The British Government dispatched a team of Scotland Yard detectives to Argentina to investigate the allegations. A report of the results of this investigation was submitted. It was referred to the public prosecutor, Dame Barbara Mills, who determined that the evidence was insufficient for prosecution. The Scotland Yard investigation kept the total number of interviewees and the content of their statements secret "because we think that to do otherwise would damage the integrity of the investigation. However, we are very grateful to those who volunteered to speak to us, as well as to the Argentine authorities for their cooperation."^[81]

Iraq War

Widespread abuses and violations of the laws and customs of war were committed by British forces during the Iraq War. There were a number of cases where British soldiers opened fire and killed Iraqi civilians in circumstances where there was apparently no imminent threat of death or serious injury to themselves or others. Many of them resorted to lethal force even though the use of such force did not appear to be justified by military necessity in order to protect life. From May 2003 to March 2004, over 37 Iraqi civilians were unlawfully killed by British troops. Some compensation were paid by the MoD to the families' victims but none of the British soldiers were charged for these deaths.^[82][83][84] Many Iraqi civilians also died or were seriously injured from brutal mistreatment while under British custody.^[85][86] In one case, following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a video showed British soldiers brutally beating an Iraqi civilian after the killing of six Royal Military Policemen, known as Red Caps, by an Iraqi mob.^[87]

An Iraqi man, Ather Karen al-Mowafakia, was shot and killed by a British Army soldier at a roadside checkpoint on 29 April 2003. Witnesses have told how he was shot in the abdomen after the door of his car struck a British soldier on the leg when he was getting out of his car, and that he was then dragged from the vehicle and beaten by British troops, dying later in hospital. There was no prosecution of British troops involved in his death.^[88][86]

In May 2003, Saeed Shabram and his cousin, Menem Akaili, were thrown into the river near Basra after being detained by British troops. Akaili survived but Shabram did not as he drowned in the river. Akaili said that he and Shabram were approached by a British patrol and led at gunpoint down to a jetty before being forced into the river. The punishment was known as "wetting" and said to have been inflicted on local youths suspected of looting. "Wetting was supposed to humiliate those suspected of being petty criminals," said Sapna Malik, the family's lawyer at Leigh Day and Co. "Although the MoD denies that there was a policy of wetting to deal with suspected looters around the time of this incident, evidence we have seen suggests otherwise. "The tactics employed by the MoD appeared to include throwing or placing suspected looters into either of Basra's two main waterways." Iraqi bystanders dragged Akaili out of the water but his cousin disappeared. Shabram's body was later recovered by a diver hired by his father, Radhi Shabram. Shabram's mother waited on the river bank for four hours, screaming and crying, while the diver searched the river. "When Saeed's corpse was finally pulled from the river, Radhi describes how it was bloated and covered with marks and bruises," said Leigh Day. Though the MOD paid compensation to Saeed Shabram's family, none of the British soldiers were charged for his death.^[89]

Ahmed Jabbar Kareem Ali, aged 15, was on his way to work with his brother on May 8, 2003, when British soldiers assaulted him. The four British soldiers beat him then forced him into a canal at gunpoint to "teach him a lesson" for suspected looting (which wasn't proven to be true). Weakened from the beating Ali received from the soldiers, he floundered. He was dead when he was pulled from the river. Four British soldiers who were involved in the death of an Iraqi teenager were acquitted of manslaughter.^[90][91]

Hanan Saleh Matrud, an eight year old Iraqi girl, was killed on 21 August 2003 by a soldier of the King's Regiment, when a Warrior armoured vehicle stopped near an alley that lead to her home. Three or four soldiers got out. A group of children, including Hanan gathered, attracted by the soldiers. Suddenly, a soldier of the King's Regiment aimed and fired a shot that hit Hanan in her lower torso. At first, soldiers did not want to take her to hospital, but later did. She died the following day after an operation. The soldiers later claimed that they had came under attack by a mob, but local people strongly denied it. No proper investigation was carried out, and no British soldier has been charged with her killing.^[92]

Corporal Donald Payne (born 9 September 1970)^[93] is a former soldier of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment of the British Army who became the first member of the British armed forces to be convicted of a war crime under the provisions of the International Criminal Court Act 2001 for the death of Baha Mousa when he pleaded guilty on 19 September 2006 to a charge of inhumane treatment.^[94][95] He was jailed for one year and dismissed from the army as a result of his actions.^[96]

On January 1, 2004, Ghanem Kadhem Kati, an unarmed young man, was shot twice in the back by a British soldier at the door to his home on January 1. Troops had arrived at the scene after hearing shooting, which neighbours said came from a wedding party. Investigators from the Royal Military Police exhumed the teenager's body six weeks later but have yet to offer compensation or announce any conclusion to the inquiry.^[82]

In May 2004, a British soldier identified as M004 allegedly mistreated captured, unarmed prisoners of war during a 'tactical questioning' in Camp Abu Naji.^[97]

In February 2006, a video showing a group of British soldiers beating several Iraqi teenagers was posted on the internet, and shortly thereafter, on the main television networks around the world. The video took place in April 2004 and was taken from an upper storey of a building in the southern Iraqi town of Al-Amarah, shows many Iraqis outside a coalition compound. Following an altercation in which members of the crowd tossed rocks and reportedly an improvised grenade at the soldiers, the British soldiers rushed the crowd. The troopers brought some Iraqi teenagers into the compound and proceeded to beat them. The video includes a voiceover in a British accent by the cameraman, taunting the beaten teenagers. The individual recording could be heard saying:

Oh, yes! Oh Yes! Now you gonna get it. You little kids. You little motherfucking bitch!, you little motherfucking bitch.^[98]

The event was broadcast in mainstream media, resulting in the British government and military condemning the event. The incident became especially worrisome for British soldiers, who had enjoyed a much more favourable position than American soldiers in the region. Concerns were voiced to the media about the safety of soldiers in the country after the incident. The tape incurred criticism, albeit relatively muted, from Iraq, and media found people prepared to speak out. The Royal Military Police conducted an investigation into the event, and the prosecuting authorities determined that there was insufficient case to justify court martial proceedings.^[99][86]

Details of beatings, electrocution, mock executions, and sexual assault by British troops during the Iraq War were revealed in the devastating 250-page dossier on January 12, 2014. These crimes could result in some of Britain's leading defence figures facing prosecution for "systematic" war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in which Britain is the state party. These crimes range from "hooding" prisoners to burning, electric shocks, threats to kill and "cultural and religious humiliation". Other forms of alleged abuse include sexual assault, mock executions, threats of rape, death, and torture. In 2006, it concluded: "There was a reasonable basis to believe that crimes within the jurisdiction of the court had been committed, namely wilful killing and inhuman treatment." At that time, prosecutors cited the low number of cases – fewer than 20 – as a reason for not mounting an investigation. Only a handful of courts martial relating to the conduct of British forces in Iraq have been held to date. Just one has resulted in a conviction – Corporal Donald Payne was jailed for a year in 2007 for the inhuman treatment of Iraqi civilians. This one conviction aside, "Nobody has been found guilty of anything of any seriousness at all," said Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers. The complaint being considered by the ICC presents evidence of the "systematic use of brutal violence, that at times resulted in the death of detainees, while in the custody of UK Services Personnel". And it claims "there is evidence of brutality combined with cruelty and forms of sadism, including sexual abuse, and sexual and religious humiliation". It points to the widespread use of "hooding", forcing people to remain in painful "stress positions", sleep deprivation, noise bombardment and deprivation of food and water. These interrogation techniques were used by British soldiers in Northern Ireland before being banned in 1972. There are "clear patterns" of the banned techniques being used "in a variety of different UK facilities [in Iraq] ... from 2003 to 2008," says the complaint. And evidence "suggests that failures to follow-up on or ensure accountability for ending such practices became a cause of further abuse. The obvious conclusion is that such mistreatment was systematic."^[100]

Afghan War

A Royal Marine Sergeant, identified as Sergeant Alexander Blackman from Taunton, Somerset,^[101] was convicted at court martial in Wiltshire of having murdered an unarmed, reportedly wounded Afghan fighter in Helmand Province in September 2011.^[102] On 6 December 2013, Sergeant Blackman received a life sentence, with a minimum of ten years before he is eligible for parole, from the court martial in Bulford, Wiltshire. Furthermore he has been dismissed with disgrace from the Royal Marines.^[103][104]

See also

Wikinews has related news: Seven British soldiers face war crimes charges

• Allied war crimes during World War II
• Arab Investigation Centres
• Battle of Danny Boy
• Chemical weapons and the United Kingdom
• Human rights in the United Kingdom
• Joint Forward Intelligence Team

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