Al-Sweady inquiry into Iraq war abuse allegations to hear from commander

Brigadier Andrew Kennett to give evidence about order to take dead Iraqis from battle scene to British army camp in May 2004

In a little-noticed public inquiry, traumatised British soldiers have broken down as they recounted their experiences of a fierce and bloody battle with Iraqi insurgents and were asked about claims that they executed 20 unarmed Iraqi civilians and tortured others.

The inquiry, into the aftermath of the notorious battle of Danny Boy in May 2004, named after a British checkpoint north of Basra, will resume on Tuesday with key evidence from a commanding officer whose decisions shaped the battle and what followed.

His men have described how they were ambushed, jumped out of their Warrior vehicles, fixed bayonets and engaged in close-quarter fighting with Iraqi supporters of the Shia militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr. They described horrific scenes as they killed and wounded Iraqis armed with machine guns, assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

Though the soldiers vehemently deny they murdered any prisoners after they were captured, some have said they saw their comrades physically abuse Iraqi prisoners, who were blindfolded and handcuffed. The Ministry of Defence strongly denies that any of the soldiers committed abuses.

On Tuesday, in a featureless room on the third floor of an unremarkable office building in central London, their commander will be asked about a decision which, in the words of one of the officers involved, has haunted them ever since – the order to remove the bodies of the dead Iraqis and take them to a nearby British camp.

Brigadier Andrew Kennett will give crucial evidence to the al-Sweady inquiry, named after a 19-year-old Iraqi – there were teenagers fighting on both sides – who was killed in the battle on 14 May 2004.

It was Kennett who gave the order, described by soldiers of 1st Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (1 PWRR), the unit most heavily involved in the battle, as unprecedented and contrary to all their training. Never before had they heard of an order to remove the dead, as well as the wounded and captured, from a battlefield.

The inquiry has heard that Kennett gave the order to find out whether an insurgent known as Bravo 1, the codename given to Naseer Zachra Abd Rufeiq, was among the dead. Rufeiq was suspected of being the ringleader of a group of Iraqi insurgents who massacred six British military police officers in the nearby town of Majar-al-Kabir a year earlier.

Over the past four months, more than a hundred British troops, some of whom have left the army, have given evidence to the inquiry chaired by a retired appeal court judge, Sir Thayne Forbes.

Francis Myatt, the regiment’s chaplain, told the inquiry: “I’ve never seen so many dead in one place.” He said he was not told at the time that captured Iraqis were also being held at the British camp, Camp Abu Naji.

Duncan Aston, an 18-year-old soldier, told the inquiry that his sergeant, Paul Kelly, fired around 30 rounds into a “pile” of Iraqi bodies from around 16ft-20ft …read more