High court backs investigation into Iraqi death
The High Court has backed calls by the family of an Iraqi civilian allegedly killed by UK troops to hold an independent investigation into his death.
Judges ruled that the death of hotel worker Baha Mousa while in the custody of members of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment in southern Iraq comes under European human rights laws.
“Today is a historic day for human rights and the rule of law in the UK,” said Phil Shiner, solicitor for the Mousa family.
The family had challenged the Government’s refusal to order a full inquiry after Ministry of Defence lawyers argued that the UK-controlled area of the country was outside EU jurisdiction.
Government QC Christopher Greenwood had said that applying the Human Rights Act, which incorporated the EU Convention on Human Rights into UK law, outside British territory would mean “war as it has never been fought”.
Articles Two and Three of the convention guarantee the right to life and freedom from torture or inhuman and degrading treatment.
But today the Gigh Court declared that there had been a breach in “procedural investigative obligations” in not launching a full inquiry into the 26-year-old’s death.
However, the court ruled out judicial reviews into allegations that British soldiers shot an Iraqi police commissioner and shot four Iraqi civilians in May 2003 in the zone around Basra.
The MoD had no immediate response to today’s ruling but a Downing Street spokeswoman said: “We will be studying the judgement.”
Responding to the judgement, the Liberal Democrat’s foreign affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell said that the ruling was a “a slap in the face for the British government.”
He added: “The ruling is a sharp reminder to the Government of its legal obligations.”
