More UK soldiers face Iraq charges

NEARLY 50 British servicemen could be prosecuted for murder, assault and other "war" crimes committed in Iraq, it was claimed last night.

Secret military documents, which inform ministers about police investigations in the cases, indicate that the servicemen include at least 12 soldiers who face charges of murder, manslaughter or assault.

The alleged crimes include two cases in which Iraqi civilians were deliberately drowned by British soldiers. The documents indicate that far more soldiers in Iraq face criminal charges than the Ministry of Defence has indicated.

One incident involves an SAS trooper who is being investigated over a shooting incident during an operation in Basra last year. Another, referred to in the documents, involves the alleged murder of a 16-year-old Iraqi who was arrested by three Irish Guards in May, 2003.

The teenager and three other Iraqis were said to have been marched at gunpoint to a dock near the Shatt al-Arab waterway in the British-controlled sector. The document states: "All were released by being forced into the Shatt al-Arab. K was a non-swimmer and drowned. One of the suspects’ conscience got the better of him several months after the incident, as a result of which all suspects were identified".

On Friday, a military judge and jury in Germany sentenced three British soldiers to prison for abusing Iraqi civilians after a trial that raised comparisons with the Abu Ghraib prison scandal involving US forces.

The jury convicted the three soldiers after a seven-week court martial at a British base in Germany that focused on the photographs one of the men took of the abuse which included dangling a detainee from a fork lift.

The army chief of staff, General Sir Mike Jackson, has now announced a review of procedures and apologised to the Iraqi nation for the abuse of civilian prisoners near Basra in 2003.

The shadow defence secretary, Nicholas Soames, welcomed General Jackson’s announcement, saying: "It needs to cover a very substantial amount of ground in order that we can minimise the possibility of these things going wrong."