**A public inquiry into the death of an Iraqi civilian in British military custody six years ago is due to open.**Baha Mousa, 26, died during detention by soldiers from the former Queen’s Lancashire Regiment after his arrest at a Basra hotel with nine other Iraqis.
In 2007, a UK soldier was jailed for inhumane treatment and the Ministry of Defence has paid £2.8m in compensation.
The inquiry, led by Sir William Gage, will focus on the death, detainees’ treatment and British army methods.
The opening statement by Gerard Elias QC, counsel to the inquiry, is expected to take two weeks, and the entire inquiry about a year.
It will be divided into four modules which will examine:
- The history of “conditioning” techniques used by UK troops while questioning prisoners from Northern Ireland in the early 1970s to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003
- What happened to Mr Mousa and other Iraqi detainees
- Training and the chain of command
- Events since 2003 and any recommendations for the future
Mr Mousa was arrested at the Haitham Hotel in Basra, where he worked as a receptionist, on 14 September 2003.
British soldiers looking for weapons found assault rifles, pistols and suspected bomb-making equipment.
Hotel staff insisted the weapons were used for security but Mr Mousa and nine other Iraqi civilians were taken to a detention centre under suspicion of being insurgents.
Two days later Mr Mousa was dead. A post-mortem examination showed he suffered asphyxiation and had at least 93 injuries to his body, including fractured ribs and a broken nose.
After an initial investigation by the Royal Military Police, a six-month court martial followed with seven soldiers facing war crimes charges relating to Mr Mousa’s death.
In April 2007, all but one were cleared on all counts at Bulford Camp in Wiltshire, but Cpl Donald Payne, 36, was jailed for a year and dismissed from the Army.
Sleep deprivation
He also became the UK’s first convicted war criminal under the International Criminal Court Act.
The court martial revealed confusion among military officers about whether “conditioning” techniques - the “softening up” of prisoners before interrogation - were lawful or not.
Methods can include hooding, depriving detainees of sleep, as well as making them stand with knees bent and hands outstretched.
Prosecutors told the court martial the techniques were banned under the Geneva Convention but soldiers said they were common practice within some military units in Basra in 2003.
In July last year the MoD agreed to pay £2.83m in compensation to the families of Mr Mousa and the nine other men detained with him.
Attorney General Baroness Scotland has ruled that any soldiers giving evidence to the inquiry will be immune from disciplinary action even if it suggests they have lied or withheld information previously.
Their own testimony also cannot be used to decide whether to prosecute them but evidence from other witnesses could still lead to criminal proceedings.
Nearly all British troops were withdrawn from Iraq this summer.