Iraqi civilians bring abuse claims to the High Court

Dozens of Iraqi civilians who claim to have been victims of abuse committed by British soldiers are set to bring a test case in London for punitive damages against the government. The legal action, which will begin later this month in the High Court in London, follows two courts martial in which soldiers were convicted of mistreating prisoners after the invasion.

In the first tranche of personal injury claims the victims were detained by the Queen's Lancashire Regiment after they raided a hotel in Basra in September 2003.

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The most high-profile case is that of the hotel's receptionist Baha Mousa, 26, who was beaten to death in a temporary detention facility operated by the Army. He suffered 93 separate injuries including fractured ribs and a broken nose. The other nine victims survived their ordeal but were left badly beaten.

Cpl Donald Payne subsequently pleaded guilty to treating Iraqi civilians inhumanely, making him the first member of the British armed forces to admit a war crime.

But more serious charges of manslaughter against Payne and other troops from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment were dropped at a court martial in Bulford earlier this year and the commanding officer, Col Jorge Mendonca, was cleared of negligence.

Martyn Day, the senior partner at London law firm Leigh Day, acting for the claimants, returned from Damascus this week after leading a team of lawyers who have taken detailed witness statements.

He said: "These are extraordinarily difficult cases because all the victims are still deeply affected ... During the interviews they often broke down and cried when they recalled the abuse they had suffered. We believe that because of the state's involvement in the abuse the damages should be awarded on an exemplary basis and we will be asking the court to throw the book at the Army."

The second set of cases flows from abuses committed at Camp Breadbasket in May 2003 by members of the 1st Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers who captured Iraqis looting. They were detained for a brief period during which they were beaten, forced to simulate oral and anal sex and suspended from a forklift truck. The incident triggered a court martial at a British Army barracks in Osnabruck, Germany.

Mr Day said: "There are 10 cases being prepared in relation to Camp Breadbasket and a further 20 claims relating to a variety of allegations of abuse committed by soldiers in other parts of southern Iraq."

The lawyers said they had contacted the Ministry of Defence after the conclusion of the court martial at Bulford Camp when the Army accepted responsibility for the abuse which took place. "We asked the Ministry of Defence to accept liability in these cases and save our clients from the harrowing experience of having to relive their ordeals during a court case in London. We are still waiting to hear back from them on this point," said Mr Day.

Des Brown, the Defence Secretary, has asked to see all the documents relating to the Baha Mousa court martial and has invited the dead man's family and other victims to make representation to his inquiry team.

The 10,000-page transcript of the court martial revealed for the first time that some senior officers had received instruction that "hooding and stressing" of prisoners was lawful, although it had been banned since the 1970s during the conflict in Northern Ireland.

'He screamed: 'I am going to die'': Radif Tahir Muslem Al Hawan, 32, a hotel cashier from Basra

On the morning of 14 September 2003, Radif Tahir Muslem Al Hawan was sleeping in the hotel office. "I had been asleep for about four hours when I was woken by a soldier shaking me. He was wearing body armour and was carrying a gun. He told me to get dressed and I was taken down to the hotel reception, where I saw 17-20 soldiers."

After accompanying soldiers to the address of someone else they wanted to question, he was taken to a detention centre in Basra. For two days he was beaten and interrogated. "During the evening of the second day I heard Baha Mousa screaming. I was still hooded but it sounded like he was in another room. I heard him scream: 'Please help me, blood is coming out, please help me, I am going to die.' The last thing I heard him say was: 'My nose broke.' After this there was silence."

'I felt three people kicking me': Joad Kadhim Jaml al-Faeaz, night porter, 46

Joad Kadhim Jaml al-Faeaz, 46, a night porter from Basra, is married with a young, disabled son.

Mr Faeaz was also arrested at the hotel and first taken to American/British POW Camp Bucca near Kuwait before being transferred to a British detention centre in Basra.

"The British soldiers then forced me into a stress position where I had to bend my knees and stretch out my arms in front of me with my back against the wall ... If I dropped my arms at any point, the soldiers would punch me all over my upper body and kick me with their boots.

"When I fell to the floor, a soldier would tighten the ties of the hood around my neck and then pull me up by the ties so that I felt strangled and the same process would be repeated ...

"I could sometimes feel three people kicking me together."