3 British Soldiers Are Cleared in Basra Death
A military court cleared three British soldiers of manslaughter Tuesday in the death of an Iraqi youth who drowned in a canal.
The soldiers, who arrested Ahmed Jabbar Kareem Ali as a suspected looter in the southern Iraqi city of Basra in May 2003, had been accused of forcing him to swim in a canal to punish him. The youth could not swim and died, prosecutors said.
Defense lawyers said the soldiers were poorly prepared and too few in number for the demands of patrolling a chaotic city in the initial weeks after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
They said the main Iraqi witness to the incident, also arrested by the soldiers, was not trustworthy.
“This case should never have been brought,” defense lawyer Jerry Hayes told Britain’s Sky television outside the courtroom at a military base in the town of Colchester, eastern England.
“It was a tragic accident, nothing more. What they were asked to do was convict three brave young men on the word of a confessed looter. And that’s ridiculous.”
The military court found guardsmen Martin McGing, 22, and Joseph McCleary, 24, and Color Sgt. Carle Selman, 39, not guilty of manslaughter. A fourth guardsman, James Cooke, 22, was cleared earlier in the trial, which began last month.
The soldiers declined to comment.
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