Jul 10, 2008 10:30 am US/Mountain
Iraqis Tortured By British Military Settle For $6M
1 Killed, 9 Others Injured While In U.K. Custody In Iraq In 2003
LONDON (AP) ―
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Iraqi Daoud Mousa, father of Baha Moussa who died while in the custody of British soldiers, shows photographs of his son and family to the press as he arrives at the High Court hearing on human rights violations in Iraq on July 28, 2004, in London.
Graeme Robertson/Getty Images
A major case involving the abuse and torture of 10 Iraqi civilians at the hands of the British military was settled Thursday, with lawyers for the victims saying the Ministry of Defense agreed to pay them just under $6 million.
The settlement involves the family of slain hotel clerk Baha Mousa and nine others who suffered injuries while in the custody of British forces in southern Iraq, said the law firm Leigh Day & Co.
The Ministry of Defense said in a statement that an "amicable" settlement had been reached but refused to state the amount of money to be paid out.
Officials said the settlement was "accompanied by an apology from the Ministry of Defense."
In the statement, the Ministry of Defense admits having liability in the case, based on an admission earlier this year by Defense Secretary Des Browne, who conceded "substantive breaches" of several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights had occurred.
The statement says the conventions on the right to life and the prohibition of torture were both violated.
Mousa was a 26-year-old hotel receptionist who died in September 2003 after being detained in the southern Iraqi city of Basra along with a group of other Iraqis on suspicion of being insurgents.
A post-mortem found Mousa suffered 93 different injuries, including a broken nose and fractured ribs. It said he died of asphyxia, caused by a stress position that soldiers forced him to maintain.
Daoud Mousa, the victim's father and an Iraqi police colonel, praised the resolution of the long-standing dispute.
"The death of my son is with me every day of my life," he said. "Today's settlement will ease a little of that pain and will go some way to enabling his children and my grandchildren to rebuild their lives."
At a High Court hearing in 2004, Daoud Mousa described in a statement how he was "horrified" by the state of his son's body.
He said: "I was asked to accompany them to identify the corpse. When I saw the corpse I burst into tears and I still cannot bear to think about what I saw," he said. "Every time I tell this story I break down."
He said that the body was covered in blood and bruises and that his nose was badly broken.
Cpl. Donald Payne, who became Britain's first convicted war criminal, was dismissed by the army and sentenced to a year in prison in 2007 over the killing.
He had pleaded guilty to inhumanely treating Iraqi civilians in southern Basra in 2003 -- the first war crimes case in Britain -- but had been cleared earlier of manslaughter charges and of perverting justice.
Payne was on trial at a court martial with six other soldiers who were cleared due to a lack of evidence.
Martyn Day, the senior lawyer handling the case, said the settlement was welcome after years of legal proceedings stemming from the events in Basra.
"We are very pleased that we have been able to reach this settlement," he said. "Our clients have been through hell over the last few years and this settlement will go some way to enabling our clients to have some semblance of a decent future life."
(© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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