Camp Bucca reveals more dirty secrets

Part two:Key witness to the killing of Baha Mousa says he recognised his British attackers in identity parade

For Sattar Shukri Abdulla, it was another weary day in Camp Bucca, a bleak, often violence-racked, prison camp in the far south of Iraq. But then the Iraqi labourer was approached by some British officers with an odd request: could he come and take a look at some soldiers nearby?

Mr Abdulla found himself taking part in an impromptu identification parade, in the prison camp near Umm Qasr, to point out the Queen's Lancashire Regiment troops who had allegedly beaten and tortured him several weeks earlier. And, Mr Abdulla has told a British law firm, he got a clear look at the suspects and identified at least one of them.

He is now a key witness in one of the most damaging controversies over British army conduct in Iraq. His testimony could play a crucial part in the prosecution of up to six QLR soldiers on charges of torturing another Iraqi civilian, the hotel receptionist Baha Mousa, to death in September last year.

As The Independent on Sunday revealed last week, Mr Abdulla was one of five men arrested with Mr Mousa who have now come forward to testify about their alleged torture and ill-treatment by the QLR.

Their witness statements, which claim their beatings were overseen by a British officer, are expected to play a central role in a High Court hearing in July into allegations that British troops have illegally killed more than 20 Iraqi civilians in mistaken shootings, beatings and riots.

The IoS has also learnt that the five men - who are planning to sue the Government for compensation - have also given a detailed description of the army officer who oversaw their interrogations and allegedly threatened them with further physical abuse if they failed to co-operate. They also have the name of one of the soldiers involved in the abuse - a name that has been passed to The IoS.

Mr Abdulla, a 51-year-old with three children, was held at Camp Bucca for 55 days after he and seven other hotel employees were arrested at the Hotel Ibn Al-Haytham hotel in September last year. In chilling irony, their initial interrogations took place in the former headquarters of "Chemical Ali", Ali Hassan al-Majid, one of the most infamous of Saddam Hussain's henchmen and the man who ordered the gassing of the Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988, killing 5,000 people.

Yet conditions at Camp Bucca and its predecessor, a British-run detention centre 2km away, had also been repeatedly criticised by human rights agencies for the harsh treatment of detainees - particularly those being "softened up" for interrogation.

A leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, given to the US and UK governments in February, reveals the ICRC had complained last year to British commanders about "brutal treatment" at the camp at Umm Qasr in the first weeks of the war.

After the camp was handed over to US forces in April 2003, inmates were "routinely treated [with] general contempt, with petty violence ... cursed, kicked, struck with rifle butts, roughed up or pushed around". Detainees were also threatened by US troops with loaded rifles and with transfer to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. This ill-treatment and the failure of the US and Britain to find and prosecute those responsible, said the ICRC, broke a total of 11 clauses in the two most recent Geneva Conventions.

Phil Shiner, a Birmingham solicitor whose firm is acting for Mr Abdulla and others, has now gathered witness statements on more than 20 deaths allegedly involving British troops. But the full list of cases in the public domain - based partly on disclosures by the Ministry of Defence and investigations by Amnesty International - is now closer to 40 suspicious deaths.

Last week the Armed Forces minister, Adam Ingram, disclosed that army investigators are currently looking into the deaths of 10 Iraqi civilians through "ill-treatment" - a higher figure than the six cases originally listed by the MoD. Crucially, the MoD said the new figure specifically excluded cases where Iraqis were shot, killed in traffic accidents or died from natural causes in detention. However, it refused to release any further details about these cases, or confirm whether they include the six suspicious deaths listed by Mr Ingram in the Commons earlier this year.

MoD officials said Government lawyers recently banned them from releasing any further information about the cases in the wake of the worldwide controversy over faked photographs published by the Daily Mirror earlier this month. The MoD also insists it is investigating all the allegations made against British forces and argues that publicly discussing these cases will hamper the legal process.

Yet Mr Shiner, who is asking the High Court to order an independent inquiry, claims none of his clients have yet been formally interviewed by the Royal Military Police. He accused the MoD of failing to release any information about the police inquiries into Mr Mousa's death. "Despite the number of witnesses and the documentary evidence, the family are being kept in the dark," he said. "This just underlines the need for the independent inquiry that I and Amnesty International are calling for."