Europe and Central Asia Summary of Amnesty International’s Concerns in the Region, January-June 2007 30 April, “Baha Musa died after being held in Army detention; post mortem examination show that he had suffered asphyxiation and some 93 injuries to his body. Others held in our detention centre at that time suffered similar treatment.” The Judge Advocate in the court martial stated that numerous individuals, “some identified but the majority not”, had been responsible for inflicting unlawful violence on Baha Mousa and other detainees. However, as the Judge Advocate remarked, many of those responsible were “not charged with any offence simply because there is no evidence against them as a result of a more or less obvious closing of ranks”. The Judge Advocate in the court martial also noted that there had been a “wholly unacceptable delay” in bringing the case to trial, and that the use of techniques such as hooding detainees, keeping them in stress positions and depriving them of sleep had become “standard operating procedure” within 1st Battalion the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment (1 QLR), whose soldiers were responsible for arresting and detaining the men in question. According to evidence heard in the court martial, these techniques were used to ‘condition’ detainees for interrogation, with the aim of maintaining the “shock of capture”. The Judge Advocate considered that this was evidence of a “serious failing in the chain of command all the way up to Brigade and beyond”. In his statement Sir Richard Dannatt confirmed that the Iraqi detainees: were subjected to a conditioning process that was unlawful …. It has always been our policy that all British military personnel deployed on operations must be in no doubt about their duty to behave in accordance with the law. It now appears that this duty was forgotten or overlooked in this case. The Iraqis we took into our custody should have been treated properly and lawfully and they were not. This was not a case of misjudgment [sic] in the heat of battle or the heat of the moment…. Amnesty International 137 The end of this trial does not mean that this incident is now closed. We know how Mr Baha Musa died, but we do not yet know who was responsible. The [Army] Prosecuting Authority and the Service police will consider whether further investigation, in the light of any evidence that has become available during the course of this Court Martial, is appropriate and further formal action might follow. JCHR scrutiny of ‘conditioning’ techniques In May, the JCHR asked the Secretary of State for Defence for an explanation of the apparent inconsistency between the evidence which had emerged during the court martial (see above) of the use of unlawful techniques to ‘condition’ detainees, and evidence which the UK government had given to the JCHR in the course of its inquiry into the UK’s compliance with the UN Convention against Torture, which had included confirmation that the use of hooding and stress positioning for the purpose of interrogation had been prohibited by the UK authorities since 1972. In June, the then Attorney General told the JCHR that he had “asked for an inquiry” into how UK soldiers in Iraq came to be advised that they could “lawfully” use these unlawful techniques to ‘condition’ detainees. He described the advice given to the soldiers of 1 QLR, as it emerged in the course of the court martial, as “a matter of grave concern”. The Al Skeini case (update to AI Index: EUR 01/001/2007) In April, in light of the fact that the death of Baha Mousa at the hands of UK service personnel was one of the cases with which the case of Al Skeini and Others v Secretary of State for Defence was concerned, AI wrote to the UK authorities in support of the visa application of Colonel Daoud Mousa -- Baha Mousa’s father -- to enter the UK to attend the hearing before the Law Lords. Colonel Mousa eventually withdrew his visa AI Index: EUR 01/010/2007