BRITAIN: An Iraqi teenager drowned after four British soldiers forced him into a canal at gunpoint to "teach him a lesson" for suspected looting, a court martial heard yesterday.
The soldiers watched as Ahmed Jabar Karheem (15), who was unable to swim, began to struggle when he was ordered into the Shatt al-Basra canal in May 2003. After the boy disappeared below the surface, the soldiers drove away. His body was recovered two days later.
"Karheem was in obvious distress as he was unable to swim," Orlando Pownall QC, prosecuting, told the court martial in Colchester yesterday. "His head bobbed to the surface and then disappeared.
"One of the soldiers who was at the bank of the canal made as if to remove his clothing in order to rescue Karheem, but then returned to the Warrior tank, which drove away."
Lance Cpl James Cooke (22), Guardsman Joseph McCleary (24), and Guardsman Martin McGing (22) of the Irish Guards are charged with manslaughter with their commander, Clr Sgt Carle Selman (39), of the Coldstream Guards. All four deny the charges.
The trial will turn the spotlight on British attempts to restore order to Iraq in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's defeat.
At the time, looting in Basra was "of epidemic proportions", Mr Pownall said. "There was no real guidance as to how best to deal with them.
"It might be said that the coalition forces were ill-prepared for the occupation of Iraq and maintenance of the peace and received insufficient guidance." But he said that while the task of maintaining law and order was "onerous", there had been no need in this case to use force.
Mr Pownall said three of the defendants gave conflicting accounts and there was only one witness, another alleged looter, who is due to give evidence today. But "a clear picture emerges of their common design or plan to force the alleged looters into the water to teach them a lesson".
The prosecution says that when the army investigated the incident, officers faced a "deliberate attempt to mislead them" by the soldiers. One told "a pack of lies" in an attempt to protect himself and his colleagues.
The four soldiers had helped Iraqi police to detain four suspected looters on May 8th, 2003. The soldiers had been due to leave Iraq the next day. They drove the youths in a Warrior armoured vehicle to the al-Zubayr bridge, which spans the Shatt al-Basra canal.
One of the suspects, Aiad Salim Hanon (25), an unemployed welder, alleged that he had been beaten by two of the soldiers, made to strip and forced into a hole filled with stagnant water. When the suspected looters came out of the water they were tied together in pairs and made to climb a high wall.
After that, they were driven away in an armoured vehicle, where they were beaten further. In a statement quoted by the prosecution, Hanon alleged that they were forced at gunpoint down a muddy slope into the canal, a tidal waterway which is two metres deep. Two soldiers threw bricks or stones at them while they were in the water.
Neither he nor Karheem - who had asthma - could swim. Karheem could not even tread water, and appeared to panic, Hanon claimed. According to the prosecution, when Guardsman McCleary returned to the British base in Basra, he told other soldiers in the restroom "that he had taken looters to the river and that one of them had drowned".