Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Where is the justice for the family of Baha Mousa?

Try to empathise with what they must be going through, the grieving relatives coping with the untimely deaths of two men, both victims of the war in Iraq. One, Matty Hull (25), was a young British soldier; the other, Baha Mousa (26), an ordinary Iraqi hotel worker in Basra. Neither was an inevitable casualty of war but the victim of servicemen brazenly flouting the rules of engagement in Iraq, an abominable operation that has brought out the worst of human nature on all sides. That historical judgement to come will be too late for the Hulls and Mousas. They will never again know tranquillity. Each day coming will have to be met by their bruised hearts in silent uproar, feelings of loss shot through with indignation and helplessness.

Lance Corporal Hull was blown to bits when his tank - clearly marked - was attacked by US A-10 pilots in March 2003, a so-called incident of "friendly fire". (Some dumb friends.) Six months later, Baha Mousa and other Iraqi civilians were snatched by British soldiers, hooded, interrogated and tortured, until Baha died. He had two children.

Last week, there was some kind of official recognition of the assault that killed Matty Hull and injured four of his colleagues. Andrew Walker, a coroner of integrity and mettle, concluded the death was entirely avoidable and unlawful. The suffering of the family, he said, had been made far worse by the treatment meted out to them out by the relevant authorities. Sobbing at the end of the investigation, Susan Hull said the same. The obfuscating British government and secretive Pentagon had denied her and Matty's parents the right to know for too long. The verdict gave them some kind of solace, some confidence that soldiers, even of the most powerful nation on earth, can be held to account. The whole story is still not available, but the coroner managed to get key facts established.

The Hulls have had the country behind them in their quest for answers. In sharp contrast, in spite of the 93 injuries found on Baha Mousa's body and evidence that he was the victim of military gang violence, his relatives were told last week there is no case for the British Army to answer. All six who denied the charges were acquitted. The transcript of the court martial shows the accused soldiers "not remembering" details more than 600 times.

But the case has not aroused the national psyche. After all, what is another Iraqi dead? A piece of growing debris. An ex-Army bigwig told me last week that it was important not to apply our sensibilities to the Arab world. They don't suffer our "gloom" over death: "It's a step to paradise or just a common hazard."

His remarks appallingly revealed a truth. For British civilians and soldiers alike, the pain and injustice suffered by the Hull family is of a different order to that experienced by the Mousas, who have received no redress and are unlikely ever to get satisfactory explanations .

The Army cover-up was bad enough, but the big guns of that institution went on to claim that the court martial was a political witch-hunt.

The double standards are despicable, the underlying assumptions even more so. Deaf to the agonised cries of the Mousa family, these chiefs damn the Army and us all to consequences they are too vainglorious to see or comprehend.

In the US, where soldiers are little gods, there have been convictions for such crimes against civilians. Here, proof of human rights violations by our boys is buried faster than their victims. There is a fine British tradition of "native taming" and collective intimidation during times of crisis. Recent books on how the Mau Mau were maltreated puts Iraq into context. Our soldiers are confident they can, with impunity, treat Iraqis like vermin because that is an entitlement that comes with the job, and always has done.

Once the colonised world took this punishment fatalistically. Not any more. Glaringly dishonourable court vindications prove to the Middle East that we are morally corrupt and the line of recruits to terrorism grows longer. The history professor Richard Overy once wrote: "Terrorists do not blow people up just because they are nihilistic thugs. Terrorism is born of fear, resentment and powerlessness ..."

One day Baha Mousa's children may join the queue because we devalued their father's life. That this degradation was endorsed in the same week as the Hull verdict makes it all the more offensive and unforgivable. Our system sees no equivalence between the two bereaved clans.

And we ostensibly went into Iraq to deliver democracy and rule of law? Like hell we did.

y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk

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