“Mistreatment” under scrutiny

The High Court has ordered hundreds of inquest-style public hearings to investigate alleged unlawful killings and mistreatment of Iraqi civilians.

The hearings will look into nearly 200 allegedly unlawful killings and up to 800 cases of alleged torture and cruel inhuman treatment of Iraqi civilians.

Three years ago, the Secretary of State for Defence (SSD) established the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) to deal with all killings and torture cases involving UK personnel in Iraq. However, Iraqi claimants have since successfully argued in the Court of Appeal that IHAT was not sufficiently independent of the armed forces, and did not comply with a member state’s requirements under Arts 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Last week, in R (on the application of Mousa) v Secretary of State for Defence [2013] EWHC 1412 (Admin), the High Court ruled that all death cases should now be subject to a public “inquisitorial process”, even in two cases where there had been an earlier decision not to prosecute, and that the IHAT inquiries did not discharge the state’s duty. It said it would maintain a supervisory role in all the torture and inhuman and degrading treatment cases.

The IHAT inquiries were not open to the public.

Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers, who acted for the claimants, says: “[The court] has found that the Ministry of Defence have not complied with international and domestic law requiring there to be proper public scrutiny of these cases and the systemic issues arising from them.”