Hounded veterans demanded an apology from defence chiefs last night after it emerged that all but one of thousands of war crime allegations from Iraq have been thrown out.
More than 3,500 allegations against UK forces between 2003 and 2009 have already been dismissed by taxpayer-funded probes.
Yesterday an independent investigator looking at the final few cases said it was ‘quite possible’ none of the claims would lead to a criminal prosecution.
More than 3,500 allegations against UK forces between 2003 and 2009 have already been dismissed by taxpayer-funded probes, pictured here, British soldiers under attack by petrol bombers in Basra in March 2004
Andrew Cayley, director of the Service Prosecuting Authority (SPA), said seven remaining allegations had been referred to his team, but in six it had been concluded no charges should be brought.
He said he expected the involvement of the SPA – the military equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service – to ‘wrap up within weeks’, suggesting it is unlikely any more cases will be passed on to it. ‘My sense is these matters are coming to a conclusion,’ he said.
Mr Cayley said he was also ‘convinced’ no action would be taken in a separate International Criminal Court investigation into alleged abuses by British soldiers.
Mr Cayley’s comments came as it emerged the Government has spent more than £82million on probes into Iraq veterans, and £10million on similar investigations on Afghanistan. Last night a lawyer who represented soldiers in one of the probes – by the now-defunct Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) – called for a public apology.
Hilary Meredith said: ‘At long last, this witch-hunt is coming to an end. The IHAT probe, which hounded hundreds of innocent troops over vile war crime slurs, was closed down in 2017. Thousands of lives were ruined... but it did not result in one prosecution.’
She added: ‘Andrew Cayley has now drawn the same conclusion saying that there is no credible evidence of wrongdoing.
‘IHAT’s closure also came at a price – not only the cost to the taxpayer but the shattered lives, careers, marriages and health of those falsely accused over many years. I am now calling for a meaningful, public apology.’
Disgraced lawyer Phil Shiner’s Public Interest Lawyers and other law firms made more than 3,500 allegations involving the British military following the invasion of Iraq in 2003, under the guise of the Human Rights Act and using legal aid funds. Mr Shiner was struck off as a solicitor in 2017 after being found guilty of misconduct and dishonesty relating to false abuse claims against troops
Disgraced lawyer Phil Shiner’s Public Interest Lawyers and other law firms made more than 3,500 allegations involving the British military following the invasion of Iraq in 2003, under the guise of the Human Rights Act and using legal aid funds. Mr Shiner was struck off as a solicitor in 2017 after being found guilty of misconduct and dishonesty relating to false abuse claims against troops.
Investigators have dismissed the claims, with Mr Cayley saying the overwhelming majority were thrown out an at early stage.
He did not provide details of the last remaining case but it is understood to refer to command responsibility for ill-treatment.
And he admitted that it is now ‘quite possible’ that accusations spanning more than a decade will result in zero prosecutions.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Law in Action programme, he said: ‘I believe it’s been an incredibly thorough and independent process.
‘And certainly my involvement, the involvement of the SPA, will wrap up within weeks rather than months. My sense is these matters are coming to a conclusion.’
He said he believed a probe of cases by ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda would soon be completed without any further action.
The Daily Mail has carried out a four-year campaign to end the ‘witch-hunt’ against troops, revealing how soldiers, many suffering from PTSD, have been dragged through relentless probes into their actions on the battlefield.
Many of them have been cleared, only to face further questions about their actions by different probes more than a decade later.
The investigations have seen the cost to the taxpayer mount up. The IHAT probe cost around £50million, while the Al-Sweady public inquiry into allegations of murder and torture made against British soldiers by Iraqi detainees cost an estimated £31million.
The latest – Iraq Fatality Investigations, a series of inquest-style inquiries – has cost £1.4million so far. And figures published by the MoD show soldiers are still facing probes, with a new body called the Service Police Legacy Investigations looking in to 18 incidents which could, technically, still be passed on to the SPA.
Former Colour Sergeant Brian Wood, who was falsely accused of wrongdoing during the Iraq War, said: ‘It is absolutely disgusting that £92million has been wasted on all of this. The public now should be asking how much of their taxes have been wasted on this pointless effort.’
Former defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon, who closed down Ihat in 2017, said: ‘It is high time, far too many veterans and their families have been through years of worry on this.
‘This witch-hunt should never have been allowed in the first place and I am glad it looks finally to be over.’ Labour defence spokesman John Healey said: ‘No one serving our country should face unfounded misconduct allegations and the MoD has allowed this drag on for nearly a decade, failing both military personnel and alleged victims.’
An ICC spokesman said ‘no final decision has yet been reached’ on the outcome of its probe.
Veterans of the Northern Ireland troubles continue to face investigation over decades-old incidents
Former soldier Dennis Hutchings, pictured, is accused of the fatal shooting of a man with learning difficulties while on patrol in County Tyrone in 1974
Veterans who served in Northern Ireland still face the prospect of being quizzed about their actions decades ago.
The Northern Ireland Office has announced the establishment of a new independent body that will examine all the unresolved deaths during the Troubles.
Only cases where there is new compelling evidence and a realistic prospect of a prosecution will be investigated, according to the Government.
And once cases have been considered, they will not be reinvestigated.
Military personnel also cannot be prosecuted unless there is compelling new evidence and consent from the Attorney General.
But veterans have complained that the protections do not go far enough and those in their 70s still live in fear of prosecution. Dennis Hutchings, 78, who is accused of a Troubles-related shooting over four decades ago, is among those awaiting trial.
And a former paratrooper faces a murder trial in July over the Bloody Sunday killings.
The Army veteran, known only as Soldier F, was charged last year with murdering two men in Londonderry on January 30, 1972. He faces five further charges of attempted murder.
Bloody Sunday became one of the most notorious incidents of the Troubles when members of the Parachute Regiment opened fire on a crowd of civil rights demonstrators, killing 13.
Elsewhere, a Chelsea Pensioner is also still being hounded over a shooting during the Troubles 47 years ago. Former Royal Marine David Griffin, 79, was told last year that Northern Ireland detectives are still ‘committed to reviewing’ the incident in July 1972.
Mr Griffin has threatened to take the police to court for ‘blackening’ his name.
I campaigned for the rights of Iraq veterans. Now this long, cruel witch-hunt of our troops is over, it's time to give them an apology, writes lawyer HILARY MEREDITH
By Hilary Meredith for the Daily Mail
At last, justice has been done. The long, cruel witch-hunt is almost over, after one of the most shameful episodes in modern legal history, which saw thousands of British soldiers who served in Iraq from 2003 to 2009 accused of brutality and abuses against civilians.
As the catalogue of charges lengthened, vast sums of public money were spent on legal investigations. Veterans were hounded, homes wrecked, and reputations trashed.
People who risked their lives on our behalf were targeted because of their heroic service.
But the flood of more than 4,000 claims against the Armed Forces turned out to be a complete fabrication.
About £57 million was spent on the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), the body set up by Gordon Brown’s Labour Government in 2010 to scrutinise the lurid accusations.
Deceit
Hilary Meredith (pictured) is a lawyer who campaigned for Iraq veterans’ rights
Yet there was no evidence to support the cases it identified. Instead, they were fuelled by anti-British political dogma and an eagerness for compensation.
Speaking to the BBC yesterday, Andrew Cayley, the director of the Service Prosecuting Authority (SPA) — the military equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service — revealed that independent investigators have dismissed almost all the allegations due to the ‘low level’ of offending and ‘lack of credible evidence’.
He said seven cases remained to be referred, but in six no charges would be brought. One is still under consideration, but it is ‘quite possible’ that it will merit no further action.
The whole exercise in quasi-legal persecution was built on deceit. British soldiers and veterans, living in the shadow of oppression by IHAT for years, can be fully exonerated now the lies have been exposed. But it is disgraceful this saga was allowed to drag on for so long, when it was obvious the allegations were fraudulent. Enfeebled politicians and credulous civil servants were ruthlessly exploited by cash-grabbing, point-scoring lawyers, who dressed up a lucrative assault on the British Army as concern for human rights.
As a solicitor representing several of the accused ex-soldiers since 2016, I saw for myself how baseless the claims were.
But what shocked me was a lack of official support for those under judicial fire from IHAT. They were breezily told to discuss the problem with their ‘commanding officer’ — impossible since they had left the services, and did not have the back-up of any military structure. In effect, they were left high and dry, floundering on Civvy Street.
I was appalled by the grotesque unfairness of it all. In peddling wild claims about ill-treatment, barbarism and even murder, the accusers painted a picture of our Armed Forces I simply did not recognise.
'I was appalled by the grotesque unfairness of it all,' says Hilary Meredith. Pictured: British Army soldiers march to attend Sunday services in Basrah on October 24, 2004
As a lawyer, I’ve been involved in the military for more than 30 years. It led to my appointment as visiting professor of law and veterans’ affairs at the University of Chester. Through this work, I have come to admire profoundly the remarkable professionalism and restraint of military personnel.
In the course of all my legal involvement with cases from campaigns in Bosnia, Kosovo, the Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan, I have never once come across a credible case of abuse.
Having met double and triple amputees maimed by roadside bombs, I feel outrage that they should be rewarded for their self-sacrifice by the threat of punishment. The same is true of soldiers who showed undaunted courage in the face of the enemy in Iraq, yet became the subject of vilification.
One such hero is Brian Wood, who led a bayonet charge against Iraqi forces trying to ambush his unit at the Battle of Danny Boy near Amara in 2004. In their narrative his accusers said it was an attack in which innocent Iraqi civilians were tortured and killed.
But the Al-Sweady inquiry in 2014 exonerated Wood and his comrades, dismissing the charges as ‘wholly without foundation and entirely the product of deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hostility’.
'Hired agents sought stories of abuses from Iraqis. Questionnaires were circulated to encourage tales of war crimes,' says Hilary Meredith. Pictured: A British soldier patrols the streets of Basrah, Iraq, on February 21, 2007
This could be applied to the whole sinister fiasco of the Iraq investigations.
At the heart of this web of deceit was Phil Shiner, a lawyer once admired by the legal establishment.
In 2004 he was named by the pressure group Liberty as ‘the human rights lawyer of the year’ for his ‘tremendous skill, tenacity and dedication’.
But such plaudits hid the malice of his methods and ideology. Filled with a neurotic hostility towards his own country’s Armed Forces, Shiner used huge sums of taxpayers’ money to orchestrate the witch-hunt.
Hired agents sought stories of abuses from Iraqis. Questionnaires were circulated to encourage tales of war crimes.
Panic
As the claims deluge rose, the Labour Government panicked and established IHAT. Its creation only encouraged Shiner and his clients to crank up their offensive. More than 1,000 of IHAT’s cases were brought by Shiner’s firms.
His key fixer, understood to be Abu Jamal, was allegedly hired by IHAT on £40,000-a-year — potentially generating a conflict of interest in which the agent of a lawyer bringing claims was also employed by the team investigating those claims.
IHAT felt so overwhelmed it also contracted a company called Red Snapper — largely made up of ex-police detectives — to conduct investigations. Eager to please their masters, Red Snapper used bully-boy tactics as disgraceful as Shiner’s. A parliamentary inquiry — to which I provided evidence — heard how Red Snapper investigators turned up at family homes or military barracks to demand information and even threaten arrest, yet had no authority to do so.
They were also in the habit of falsely introducing themselves as police officers — the only conviction was of one of its own private investigators for impersonating a police officer.
The entire thrust of IHAT’s work crumbled amid revelations about Shiner’s corruption. In 2017, he was found guilty by a professional tribunal of multiple misconduct charges, including dishonesty and lack of integrity. Struck off as a solicitor, he filed for bankruptcy.
Hilary Meredith says: 'Politicians and civil servants who betrayed serving personnel should be subjected to scrutiny. Nothing of this sort should ever be allowed to happen again.' Pictured: Members of a company of Britain's Black Watch patrol a village on the east banks of the Euphrates
Terror
In response, Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon shut down IHAT, a body that should never have been established in the first place. It was a vehicle for dubious enrichment and nasty propaganda at the expense of valiant warriors.
With the saga approaching its welcome end, honour has been restored. But a terrible price has been paid, not only by the taxpayer but also by the accused: shattered families, broken marriages, ruined finances, stalled careers, poor mental and physical health.
No soldiers or veterans deserve to be treated like this. The Government should have stood up to Shiner and his cronies from the start, not let them institute a reign of terror through IHAT and the courts.
That is why today, I demand a full apology from the Ministry of Defence and a public inquiry into what went wrong.
Politicians and civil servants who betrayed serving personnel should be subjected to scrutiny. Nothing of this sort should ever be allowed to happen again.
Throughout the coronavirus crisis, the whole nation has rightly expressed its gratitude to the medical professionals and emergency workers who put themselves in harm’s way on our behalf.
That is also the guiding mission of the Armed Forces. Their members should be cherished, not hung out to dry.
