CIA Copy of London Independent on Sunday Article: 'The British Said My Son Would Be Free Soon. Three Days Later I Had His Body'

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London Independent on Sunday
January 4, 2004
Pg. 16
'The British Said My Son Would Be Free Soon. Three Days Later I
Had His Body'
Robert Fisk reports from Basra on the death in custody of the so
By Robert Fisk
The last time Lieutenant Colonel Daoud Mousa of the Iraqi police saw his son Baha alive was on 14
September, as British soldiers raided the Basra hotel where the young man worked as a receptionist.
"He was lying with the other seven staff on the marble floor with his hands over his head," Col Mousa says
today. "I said to him: Don't worry, I've spoken to the British officer and he says you'll be freed in a couple
of hours." The officer, a second lieutenant, even gave the Iraqi policeman a piece of paper and wrote "2Lt.
Mike" on it, alongside an indecipherable signature and a Basra telephone number There was no surname.
"Three days later, I was looking at my son's body," the colonel says, sitting on the concrete floor of his
slum house in Basra. "The British came to say he had died in custody'. His nose was broken, there was
blood above his mouth and I could see the bruising of his ribs and thighs. The skin was ripped off his
wrists where the handcuffs had been."
Baha Mousa left two small boys, five-year-old Hassan and three-year-old Hussein. Both are orphans,
because Baha's 22-year-old wife died of cancer just six months before his own death.
No one hides the fact that most if not all the eight men picked up at the Haitham hotel - where British
troops had earlier found four weapons in a safe - were brutally treated while in the custody of the Royal
Military Police. One of Baha's colleagues, Kifah Taha, suffered acute renal failure after being kicked in the
kidneys; a "wound assessment" by Frimley Park Hospital in Britain states bluntly that he suffered
"generalised bruising following repeated incidents of assault".
When Col Mousa and another of his sons, Alaa, visited Kifah Taha in a Basra hospital immediately after
his release to seek news of Baha, they found the wounded man - in Alaa's words - "only half a human, with
terrible bruises from kicking on his ribs and abdomen. He could hardly speak."
But another of Baha's colleagues - who pleaded with The Independent on Sunday not to reveal his name
lest he be rearrested by British forces in Basra - gave a chilling account of the treatment the eight men
received once they arrived at a British interrogation centre in Basra, By a terrible coincidence, the building
had formerly been the secret service headquarters of Ali Majid, Saddam's brutal cousin, known as
"Chemical Ali" for his gassing of the Kurds of Halabja and later military governor of the Basra region.
"We were put in a big room with our hands tied and with bags over our heads. But I could see through
some holes in my hood. Soldiers would come in - ordinary soldiers, not officers, mostly with their heads
shaved but in uniform - and they would kick us, picking on one after the other. They were kick-boxing us
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'Ihe British Said My Son Would Be Free Soon. Three Days Later I Had His Body'
the soldiers who were stealing the money would want to mistreat my son as a result of what I did."
Alaa says that it was three days before they learned the truth about what had happened to Baha. "I was at
home and I went outside to find the street filled with British soldiers. They didn't have Baha's name right,
but.they said they were looking for the family of the man whose wife died of cancer. I said it must be Baha
and one of the officers said: Can you come with us?
"A sergeant came into our home, his name was Jay, and he sat on our sofa and said: I have come to tell you
about the death of your brother Baha. It was like a revolution in our house - there was screaming and
shouting and crying. The British said they wanted my father, Daoud, and one of us to come to identify the
body. He said a doctor from Britain was coming to examine the body." Alaa described how he later met a
"Professor Hill", a pathologist who, he says, later acknowledged that there were "very clear signs of beating
on the body".and that two of Baha's ribs had been broken.
Robert Harkins, the British political officer in the city, arranged for the Mousa family to meet Brigadier
William Moore, commander of British forces in Basra. The family say that Brig Moore, though he
expressed his condolences to Daoud Mousa, refused to allow an Iraqi lawyer to participate in the British
inquiry. "He told us that since this had happened inside the British Army, the British Army would conduct
the investigation," Alaa says.
The brigadier issued a statement on 3 October, expressing his "regrets" that their son "died while under
British jurisdiction" and promising that if the military police concluded that a crime had been committed,
"those suspected will be tried ... under the laws of the United Kingdom." The family initially accepted
$3,000 of compensation for Baha's death - they say they thought that by offering this, the British were
accepting responsibility - but they refused to sign a letter they received last month from a British claims
officer called Perkins which offered a further $5,000 as a "final settlement" of the "incident" which would
be made "without admission of liability on behalf of the British Contingent of the Coalition Forces in Iraq".
An MoD spokeswoman said yesterday that "as far as I'm aware, as of the beginning of December, the
investigation was ongoing - nothing in our records suggests it is not still ongoing". But no charges appear
to have been made, no soldiers are currently under arrest and Alaa Mousa and his father Daoud remain
infuriated by their treatment.
"Are the soldiers responsible for killing Baha to go unpunished?" Alaa asks. "Why can't we be involved in
this? If these men have no punishment, they will do this again.
"We are not saying the British are occupiers. We think you came here to Basra to save us from Saddam.
But you should not treat my family like this, just paying us money when you kill Baha and ... then stopping
us being involved in finding out what really happened. If you go on like this, your big welcome in Basra
will be over."
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