A £30 million public inquiry has found that human rights lawyers falsely accused British soldiers of war crimes in Iraq in a shameful attempt to impugn the military. The UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon was incandescent in the House of Commons yesterday, demanding an apology from the two law firms involved, Public Interest Lawyers and Leigh Day, and their clients. Small wonder. The al Sweady inquiry was ordered by the then Labour government in 2009 after claims that up to 20 Iraqis were taken prisoner by British troops and then tortured and murdered. The inquiry found that these central allegations were totally false. All it found against the soldiers was evidence of some relatively minor mistreatment. As the former commander of British troops in Afghanistan, Col Richard Kemp, writes in todays Independent, this case was not an attempt to achieve justice but an act of lawfare against the British state. These false, widely publicised, allegations of murder, abuse and torture against British soldiers have been used to incite hatred and stir up violence - and not just in Iraq. It is likely that they have aided terrorist recruitment and led to unnecessary loss of life, he writes. The cumulative effect of years of legal attack on our troops is to risk making both soldiers and commanders unnecessarily cautious in battle, endangering their lives and the lives of civilians that they have to protect. This legal war of attrition is also steadily undermining the Governments resolve and forcing Defence ministers to err on the side of extreme caution - a stance that usually ends in military defeat. Only this week we have seen new guidelines about interrogation techniques, which ban soldiers from intimidating prisoners even by shouting at them or thumping a table. This level of control is not demanded by the Geneva Conventions and is unprecedented in the history of warfare. It removes the ability of battlefield commanders to gain valuable information in the immediate aftermath of capture. It will also endanger lives and reduce fighting effectiveness. The question is how many of the other torture claims against the British state that have been keeping Britains human rights lawyers so busy and undermining the UKs defences by demoralising both British soldiers and the already anti-war public are also, in the words of the al Sweady inquiry chairman Sir Thayne Forbes,wholly without foundation and entirely the product of deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hostility. independent.co.uk/voices/comment/alsweady-inquiry-an-exercise-in-greed-that-blights-the-lives-of-brave-soldiers-9931749.html
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 15:50:02 +0000
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