Army hit by new claims of bullying

AN INQUIRY was launched last night into fresh claims of military abuse after video footage emerged showing the apparent bullying of recruits.

The pictures, filmed by a soldier at the army's School of Infantry, in Catterick, north Yorkshire, show recruits hooded and forced to assume humiliating poses.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman confirmed that Royal Military Police were examining claims of abuse and that the allegations were serious. Recorded last year, the images have uncomfortable echoes of pictures of the abuse of detainees in Iraq.

In one section, young soldiers are seen in hoods, with their hands above their head and their faces pressed against a wall.

Parts of the film show a soldier pushing his boot into a recruit's neck and others depict hooded recruits forced into distasteful positions. In one, an infantryman is forced to sit on a colleague's face.

Lee McDonald, a regular soldier currently absent without leave from the barracks, told the BBC that abuse was routine at Catterick. "It scares me now, the thought of going back there," he said.

Parents of young soldiers who died at the Deepcut army barracks in Surrey - including James Collinson, 17, from Perth - repeated their calls for a public inquiry into the issue. Des James, whose daughter Cheryl died there, said the new footage did not surprise him and there was a "major problem" in the British Army.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of human rights campaign group Liberty, said: "The pictures depict not just a breach of fundamental human rights, but a profound lack of discipline, which should be of concern to everyone."