Ex-UK commander admits Iraqi torture, denies role

[joeblow]

Ex-UK commander admits Iraqi torture, denies role
Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:06:36 GMT

http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=1 ... =351020601



(PA photo) Jorge Mendonca leaves the Baha Mousa public inquiry on February 15, 2009.

A former British army commander in Iraq, Colonel Jorge Mendonca, has denied any involvement or knowledge of torture of civilian detainees by his regiment.

Mendonca was cleared by a court martial over the death of the 26-year-old Iraqi hotel receptionist, Baha Mousa, but Britain's only convicted war criminal accused the senior army officer last November of being violent towards detainees himself.

Mousa was killed with 93 injuries to his body while in British custody in Basra in September 2003.

Mendonca told a public inquiry on Monday that while he accepted responsibility for what had happened, it was important to stress that his subordinates had kept him in the dark.

Donald Payne is the sole soldier sentenced in the torture case, while ten other soldiers from Mendonca's unit have also admitted assaulting Mousa and six other Iraqis arrested with him.

Mendonca also defended the use of the banned measures, including hooding detainees, subjecting prisoners to stress positions and sleep deprivation. He claimed such measures were necessary to hinder the prisoners' communication or escape.

The stories of violence, which some soldiers have said they were ordered to perform by their seniors, are gruesome.

Payne has accused Mendonca and a platoon commander, Lt. Craig Rodgers, of physically attacking a group of prisoners and threatening to set them on fire as well as punching a detainee in front of more than one hundred soldiers.

Military witnesses have told the inquiry, which began last July, that troops under Col. Mendonca's command kicked a 12-year-old boy in the head for throwing a stone.

Mendonca has denied any knowledge of the incident.

ZHD/MB