An independent report into the death of an Iraqi hotel clerk during the Iraq war is expected to clear the British army of systematically torturing civilians, a British newspaper reported on Sunday. However, the report, due to be published on September 8, will strongly criticise serving and former soldiers for their conduct and describes numerous failures in the military chain of command, the Sunday Telegraph said.
The previous Labour government ordered a public inquiry in 2008 into the death of Basra hotel worker Baha Mousa and the alleged mistreatment of nine other civilians at the hands of British soldiers in southern Iraq in September 2003.
The inquiry heard evidence from 247 witnesses over 115 days of hearings.
Mousa, 26, was beaten and died some 24 hours after he and six others were arrested by the British army during a sweep of hotels in the city of Basra looking for weapons.
The inquiry, chaired by retired judge William Gage, tried to establish how Mousa died and examined the British military's use of banned techniques to try to break prisoners during interrogation. A post-mortem revealed Mousa sustained 93 injuries, including a fractured nose and two ribs, though pathologists disagree on the exact cause of death.
Some of the detainees said they were kicked. Another said he was scalded with hot water and urinated upon. At a court martial in 2007, one British soldier pleaded guilty to mistreating Mousa and was sentenced to a year in prison, while six other soldiers were acquitted.
In 2008, Britain's Defence Ministry agreed to pay nearly 3 million pounds ($4.9 million) in compensation to a group of Iraqi civilians, including Mousa's family, who were beaten and tortured by British troops in southern Iraq in 2003.