Up to 20 Iraqi civilians may have been executed by British troops in southern Iraq, it has been claimed.
British lawyers published a dossier of evidence from men taken captive after a gun battle near the southern Iraqi town of Majat-al-Kabir in May 2004. It also suggested prisoners were tortured and mutilated by British troops.
The allegations were first reported within weeks of the incident, but lawyers for five Iraqis have now issued detailed witness statements, photographs of corpses and death certificates of the men who died.
The Ministry of Defence strongly denies the claims.
A spokesman for the BBC's Panoramaprogramme, which has spent a year examining the claims, said the evidence did not prove Iraqis had died at the hands of British captors, but that prisoners may have been "mistreated".
Lawyers suggested that prisoners captured after the three-hour gun battle may have been taken to a British base at Abu Naji and killed.
Witness statements from the five men - Hussein Jabbari Ali, Hussain Fadhil Abass, Atiyah Sayid Abdelreza, Madhi Jassim Abdullah and Ahmad Jabber Ahmood - described what they heard while in detention, when they were cuffed and forced to wear blacked-out goggles.
The statements described how they heard other men screaming, moaning in pain and choking, and the sound of gunfire.
PA