Documents relating to the public inquiry established to investigate the torture and death of Baha Mousa by British troops in Basra, September 2003.
Baha Mousa was a 26-year-old hotel receptionist and single father. On 4 September 2003, British soldiers from A Company, 1st Battalion Queens Lancashire Regiment (1 QLR) raided the Hotel Ibn Al Haitham in Basra looking for suspected insurgents. Baha Mousa was detained during this raid along with ten others. The men were subsequently subjected to interrogation and torture, and Mousa died of his injuries in British custody 36 hours later.
A 2006 court martial saw seven British personnel charged for their involvement in his death, though the only successful prosecution was the result of one soldier’s guilty plea for inhumane treatment. The Baha Mousa Inquiry, established in 2008, was directed to expand investigations beyond the scope of criminal liability, tasked with examining the circumstances surrounding Baha Mousa’s death, the mistreatment of his fellow detainees, and how British forces had come to develop their detainee handling practices.
The resulting 1300-page report, written by retired High Court judge Sir William Gage, was published on 8 September 2011. Gage concluded that Baha Mousa and his fellow detainees had been subjected to ‘violent and cowardly abuse and assaults by British servicemen’, and that this treatment significantly contributed to Baha Mousa’s death. He also identified a number of institutional failings which had allowed harmful and unlawful detainee handling practices to develop. Gage’s findings were accompanied by 73 recommendations, of which all but one were accepted by the Ministry of Defence.
This collection includes the final reports from the Inquiry, along with a full set of witness statements, hearing transcripts, rulings and associated governing documents.
