International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has claimed that there is a “reasonable basis” to believe that soldiers from the United Kingdom (UK) committed war crimes against detainees during the Iraq war.
The announcement from the The Hague means that the ICC is now set to move ahead with the investigation into claims that UK troops brutally abused and killed Iraqi prisoners after the US-led invasion of the country.
The declaration by Bensouda came in the form of a 74-page report which was delivered to the annual assembly of state parties who take part in the jurisdiction of the international court.
“The [prosecutor’s] office has reached the conclusion that there is a reasonable basis to believe that members of the UK armed forces committed war crimes within the jurisdiction of the court against persons in their custody,” Bensouda said in her conclusion on the inquiry into the role of British troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2008.
The chief prosecutor, however, did seek to dismiss allegations that British troops committed any war crimes on the battlefield.
“In the absence of information indicating intent to kill or target civilians or civilian objects, or cause clearly excessive civilian injuries, there is no reasonable basis to believe that war crimes within the jurisdiction of the court were committed by British armed forces in the course of their military operations not related to the context of arrests and detentions,” the report revealed.
A preliminary inquiry by the ICC in 2006 into allegations of a similar nature had had suggested that troops from the UK did commit war crimes in Iraq, “namely willful killing and inhuman treatment of detainees”.
The recent report reaffirms the earlier assessment.
Fewer than 20 allegations at the time though, prevented any action into the matter, the court had concluded. The ICC investigation was reopened by Fatou Bensouda in 2014 after she received fresh information into the claims.
The new evidence came from a number of different sources, including a Birmingham law firm called Public Interest Lawyers (PIL).
The firm has since closed down.
PIL represented the family of Baha Mousa, the Iraqi hotel receptionist tortured to death by British troops in 2003. The company’s Phil Shiner was subsequently prosecuted by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and disbarred from being a solicitor over allegations linked to other claims he pursued in relation to Iraqi claimants.
Bensouda’s report examines the controversy over the claims and refers to the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT). It says that “amid concerns of political interference, the defence secretary [Michael Fallon] announced the closing of IHAT ahead of the originally scheduled time frame by 30 June 2017, citing IHAT’s own forecasts that the unit’s caseload was expected to reduce to around 20 investigations by the summer 2017.”
Bensouda said her office had “exercised an abundance of care” because the more recent allegations against UK forces in Iraq were mostly brought to the office’s attention by only one source.
Defense officials from Britain have previously said on record that they were confident the ICC would not announce a formal investigation into the allegations since the UK had the relevant capacity to conduct an inquiry into the claims itself.
A UK government spokesperson said: “We have a legal responsibility to investigate credible allegations of wrongdoing by UK forces, and that is what we are already doing as part of service police legacy investigations, which is reviewing the relatively small number of remaining cases after the closure of IHAT, and through Operation Northmoor.
“We are confident that our existing efforts to investigate allegations preclude the need for any investigation by the ICC.”