Iraqi and Son Recall Detainee’s Death at British-Run Prison

They stopped beating Dhahir Mansurie after Baha Mousa died, his head split and bleeding on the prison floor.

“That kind of scared them,” Mansurie said of the British soldiers who run the prison camp in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. His 18-year-old son, Muhaned, was not so lucky; Muhaned says his guards continued to beat him, often with an iron pipe, for three months. Once, he says, they forced him to strip naked and told him to “dance like Michael Jackson.”

Like its U.S. partner in the occupation authority ruling Iraq, Britain is facing serious allegations that its soldiers frequently abused Iraqi prisoners.

For the British, the first allegations, complete with photographic evidence, emerged last year, and a new scandal erupted almost simultaneously with the one now riveting the United States.

The case of Baha Mousa is one of six involving the British in which a court-martial has been recommended, and at least one soldier may face manslaughter charges. A total of 21 Iraqi civilians have died either in British custody or in other circumstances where misconduct by British forces was alleged, according to the British government. Investigations are ongoing in 12 other cases.

Mousa was allegedly beaten to death. He died several days after he, the Mansuries and four employees of Mansurie’s hotel were rounded up in early morning raids Sept. 14. Mousa, a widowed father of two, worked at the hotel as a night desk clerk.

In the raid on the hotel, the British soldiers seized five Kalashnikovs, which the Mansuries say they kept for their protection and that of the building and guests.

The men, with bags over their heads and handcuffed, were taken to a building across the street from the old offices of Saddam Hussein’s feared Mukhabarat secret service. There, the interrogations, beatings and kicking began, Dhahir and Muhaned Mansurie said in interviews.

At least one of the British interrogators spoke Arabic. “He took the bag from my head and put his face close to mine, staring into my eyes,” Muhaned, a high school senior, recalled. “It was really scary. His eyes were red.”

The soldiers demanded information on insurgency plans, past attacks on British forces and the hiding places of weapons. Both Mansuries insisted that they knew nothing.

“Then the soldiers came and started beating us with iron pipes and chains,” Muhaned said.

Two days later, he said, he saw Baha Mousa die.

British soldiers “put a rope on his neck,” Muhaned said. “He was lying on the ground and they were dragging him by the neck. A bunch of soldiers were kicking him. Poor Baha.”

He said the blunt force appeared to fracture Mousa’s skull.

The details of the Mansuries’ account cannot be independently verified. But the British military in January paid compensation, without admission of fault, to the Mousa family for Baha’s death.

The Mousas are among 14 Iraqi families scheduled to go before Britain’s High Court in London this week to demand that the Defense Ministry accept legal responsibility.

The case also appears in a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, released last week, that details widespread abuse of prisoners by occupation soldiers.

The British, America’s main partners here, generally have had to deal with less violence than U.S. forces, and they have prided themselves on what they consider to be a more sophisticated expertise in operating in the midst of a civilian population.

But they have also had to face allegations of mistreatment for many months.

A private was arrested a year ago after photographs became public showing an Iraqi prisoner dangling from a forklift. In another case last May, British soldiers were accused of forcing a prisoner to try to swim across a river; the person drowned.

In the last week, Britain has become embroiled in a new controversy over alleged beatings, abuse and killings of Iraqi detainees in the custody of the members of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment in Basra.

The story has been driven by revelations by three anonymous soldiers speaking to the Daily Mirror newspaper, and a set of photos, the authenticity of which has been questioned, showing a hooded prisoner being kicked and urinated upon by unidentifiable soldiers.

The outrage among the general public has not been as intense as in the United States, in part because the evidence is not as incontrovertible and shocking as the photos snapped at Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad. Still, British officials have taken many of the same steps as U.S. officials: issuing apologies and expressions of responsibility and promising full investigation and punishment.

In Friday’s editions of the Mirror, a reservist soldier attached to the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment and identified as “C” claimed to have witnessed the beatings of four POWs.

C said that most of the incidents were during “tactical questioning” at the regiment’s Basra headquarters, involving sergeants and other noncommissioned officers, and that officers must have been aware because they would have been able to see the marks left on the prisoners’ faces. He estimated that about 100 soldiers were involved.

“In [a] battle situation when you capture someone, you’re supposed to keep up the shock of capture so you can extract more things out of prisoners, like important information,” he said, according to the newspaper. “That’s a standard textbook thing we’re all taught -- to deprive them of certain senses, like sight, and make loud noises around them. That’s fine. But it went beyond that, way beyond the line.”

As the scandal widened on both sides of the Atlantic, senior British officials said that although they believed any misdeeds were the actions of a few rogue soldiers, they would leave “no stone unturned” to ferret out the truth.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said any abuse was unacceptable. “We went to Iraq to stop that kind of thing, not to do it ourselves,” he said.

Only after Baha Mousa died did Dhahir Mansurie, who is 56, receive medical attention, he says. He has a heart condition and complained that the beatings were damaging his kidneys, he said, but the interrogations continued.

His son Muhaned says the soldiers forced him to sit on an electricity generator and then scalded his backside with its boiling water. Another time, he says, they shoved his face into a toilet overflowing with human excrement.

The treatment, the Mansuries said, was widespread.

“There were a lot of people there, in the same conditions,” Muhaned said. “I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them. I could hear their screams. They screamed like women, from the beatings.”

The Mansuries were accused of hiding weapons, although only the five assault rifles were discovered, and it is not clear whether formal charges were pressed. Father and son were released.

Dhahir and Muhaned Mansurie said that toward the end of their detention, they were summoned before two British officers and a woman in civilian clothes whom they took to be a lawyer and questioned about their treatment. The British officers apologized, the Mansuries said, and then asked them to identify the soldiers who had tormented them from a series of pictures.

Dhahir Mansurie said they could identify two men.

For weeks after his release, Muhaned, an asthmatic literature student, couldn’t resume his studies. He trembled and worried and developed a stutter.

In the interview with The Times, his voice choked as he recounted what he went through. Speaking in little more than a whisper at the conclusion, he asked, “Do you think the British will come back for me?”

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Wilkinson reported from Baghdad and Daniszewski from London. Special correspondent Mohammed Arrawi in Baghdad contributed to this report.