Redcaps' families furious at 'blunders'

Damning details of the blunders that may have contributed to the deaths of six British Royal Military Police in Iraq were disclosed last night.

Damning details of the blunders that may have contributed to the deaths of six British Royal Military Police in Iraq were disclosed last night.

The men's families said they were furious after reading witness statements taken by a board of inquiry, which were not handed to them until the final report was published last week.

John Miller, whose 21-year-old son, Corporal Simon Miller,was one of the six to be killed by an angry mob, said the witness statements revealed that the Parachute Regiment received warnings on the morning of the attack. "There was a briefing about intelligence. It was not passed on to the RMP," said Mr Miller.

He said the families had been led to believe there was no evidence that the deaths could have been avoided. Mr Miller added: "We were manipulated by the Ministry of Defence. I think our lads would still be alive today if they had received the intelligence briefings given to the Paras."

A soldier from 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, told the inquiry that on the day of the attack, 24 June, he received a briefingthat intelligence "had guessed that the locals were intending to ambush a patrol". But a soldier from the Royal Military Police told the inquiry they had no intelligence that anything was going to happen.

The inquiry found no one was to blame for the deaths.

Reg Keys, father of Lance Corporal Thomas Richard Keys, 20, from Bala in North Wales, who also died, said: "We were fed a fairy story. We feel very angry about this."