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Iraqis accuse British troops of unlawful killing

* Russia wants UN to check Iraq torture reports
* France calls reported prisoner abuse ‘unacceptable’

LONDON: Lawyers for 14 Iraqi families who allege their relatives were unlawfully killed by British troops in post-war Iraq took their case to London’s High Court on Wednesday.

The Ministry of Defence refuses to accept responsibility for the deaths but the families’ lawyer, Phil Shiner, demanded a judicial review to examine whether the killings were a violation of the victims’ right to life under the European law.

“The soldiers and Ministry of Defence can’t get away with killings...with impunity,” Shiner told BBC radio. “There have to be inquiries.” A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence - already under intense pressure after photographs showing alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers appeared in newspapers last week — said the government had responded to lawyerss’ inquiries.

“We do not accept liability for the deaths they have brought to our attention, and have written to them informing them of our reasons,” he said. Shiner said many of the victims were at home, or going about their normal daily lives when soldiers burst in and shot them.

“One man was working on a farm, another was fishing on a river, another was returning home in his car when he was killed,” he said.

He argued that because the Iraq war had officially ended when the victims died, and because Britain was an occupying power, the European Convention on Human Rights should apply.

“Normally the human rights act applies to the territory of the (EU) member states but there are exceptions, and one of those exceptions is where the state has effective control of another territory,” he said.

Britain joined the United States’ war on Iraq in March last year. President George W. Bush declared the war over on May 1 2003. The high court case comes as the British government has launched an investigation into photographs published by the Daily Mirror newspaper which appear to show British troops kicking and urinating on a hooded Iraqi in Basra, southern Iraq. Britain, which has around 7,500 troops serving in Iraq, says it wants to question the soldiers to check whether the pictures are authentic and if so, bring those involved to justice.

Russia: The United Nations should investigate the allegations of torture against US and British forces in Iraq, a top Russian diplomat was quoted as saying on Wednesday. Both London and Washington have launched inquiries into torture by their troops in Iraq after media published pictures purporting to show prisoners being abused.

“This torture is a clear violation of human rights. It complicates the process of bringing order to Iraq in that it causes even greater dislike of foreign occupation,” Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Yuri Fedotov, told the Interfax news agency. “We think this question has to be put under the scrutiny of the UN Commission for Human Rights.” Russia is a permanent veto-holding member of the UN Security Council. It opposed the US-led attack on Iraq but has since repaired ties with Washington, although it calls for greater UN involvement in Iraq.

France: Paris on Wednesday condemned the alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US-led coalition forces, calling the incidents “unacceptable” and saying that if confirmed, they would violate international conventions.

“As the authorities of the coalition member states said themselves, the treatment of some Iraqi detainees, as it appears in the images released in the media in recent days, is totally unacceptable,” said foreign ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous. —Reuters/AFP

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