Video images of alleged British soldiers brutally beating a group of Iraqi teenagers remind the world all too strongly of Abu Ghraib. The allegations are very serious and are certain to renew debate over the conduct of the coalition forces in Iraq. The pictures, in the News of the World, are highly distressing. Soldiers are shown chasing youths, dragging four of them into a compound and beating them with batons and kicking various parts of their bodies — with at least one blow to the genitals. The attack went on for a minute, with 42 blows inflicted in that time. The News of the World said there was also one of a soldier kicking a dead Iraqi in the face.
The newspaper described the footage, filmed in southern Iraq, as a secret home video, apparently filmed for fun by a corporal and then obtained by the paper from a whistleblower whom it declined to identify. The paper claims that it has established that the soldiers involved were British, but would not disclose to which unit or regiment they belong.
What is most intriguing is that the authorities appear to be absolutely clueless as to what is happening right under their noses. Where was the British Ministry of Defense all this time? Why is the ministry so often the last one to know what its personnel are doing? Or did it know?
If the allegations are true, it would not be the first such incident. A year ago this month, three British soldiers were jailed and dismissed from the army in disgrace for their roles in a prisoner abuse scandal at an aid camp in southern Iraq. Still, all the facts must be provided before conclusions are reached. News of the World, Britain’s best-selling Sunday newspaper, says it has made exhaustive checks to establish the video’s authenticity. In 2004, however, the Daily Mirror’s photographs appearing to show soldiers from the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment abusing Iraqi detainees were later revealed to be fakes.
Like the nine American soldiers convicted in October of offenses relating to a series of abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, if British soldiers have broken rules that govern situations in wartime, they too must be punished. They should be brought to justice because it appears that at other times they are not. Lawyers acting for Iraqi civilians who claim they were tortured by British troops were told last week that a prosecution for war crimes would not be brought by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The cases include a 26-year-old hotel receptionist who died in the custody of British troops in Basra in September 2003.
Iraq has turned out to be much more difficult than the British military expected since the US-led invasion began in March 2003. The price of Britain’s involvement in Iraq is now 100 servicemen killed and many more injured. But the answer is not for British troops ruthlessly to abuse helpless teenagers in Iraq for what was described as a disturbance or some sort of protest near a British military compound.
