Three soldiers were arrested on Tuesday in connection with the video of British troops allegedly abusing Iraqis in the northern town of Amara in 2004. The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) said three individuals who "might be implicated in the allegations had been detained."
The arrests came as Basra provincial council severed all relations with Britain and two of the alleged victims of abuse came forward to identify themselves and demand compensation. Protesters marched on the British consulate in Basra and burned the British flag.
They carried flags and banners reading "No, no to Tony Blair" and "Try the British soldiers involved in this aggression." The council said in a statement: "All governmental offices will cut all kinds of relations with the British forces and they will not cooperate with them until further notice."
Last night the MoD said: "The military police have identified several people in the video and investigations are ongoing to identify all those involved in the alleged incident."
The father of the soldier believed to have recorded the video defended his son and called for troops to be brought out of Iraq.
Corporal Martin Webster of the 1st Battalion the Light Infantry was arrested on Sunday by military police officers after the exposure of the video by the News of the World, a British tabloid.
Jim Webster said he did not know why his son took the footage or indeed if it was his voice talking over the events.
"People don't understand what's going on out there in Basra. Martin is in the firing line -- it's easy for the politicians to throw mud but my son's out there on the ground. The politicians don't have a clue what is going on. I don't think the troops should be out there," he said.
He added: "My son is not a bad boy. He's dug himself into a pit and he's got to find his way back out again -- but we will support him."
In Basra, council official Nadhim al-Jabiri said cooperation with the British consulate there would end. Major General Hassan Suwadi, the city's police chief, said all Iraqi security forces would stop conducting joint patrols with the British military in the province.
He said: "We condemn the abuse of the British forces and demand the British government adopt legal procedures as soon as possible to punish its soldiers who carried out the abuse."
At a press conference at the office of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the two Iraqis who claim to have been among those beaten said they would take legal action. Bassem Shaker, 27, said: "I was one of 250 unemployed people demonstrating in the street in 2004, but when we reached the governor's office we were surprised by the presence of the British forces. We started throwing stones at them because we believed that they were behind all our misery."
Riyadh Mahoud, the governor of Amara, said local authorities were helping the purported victims sue.
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
RSS