My war against Army sexists was WORSE than being held hostage and nearly executed in Iraq

By Barbara Davies for the Daily Mail









She's the lawyer who became an Army poster girl and, in a terrifying ordeal, helped a male officer rescue two SAS men from an Iraqi mob.

He got an MC. She got a hug ... and a lesser job. Here,she explains why she decided to take on the top brass

Rabia Siddique was once regarded as the perfect poster girl for the British Army. Her photograph, reprinted on thousands of recruitment posters, helped dispel all the worst myths about the armed forces. Not just a woman officer, but an attractive one, too.

She was also a Muslim. Rabia, a high-flying military lawyer and recipient of the Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service, certainly ticked all the right boxes.

And despite never being trained in close combat, when she was put to the test in Iraq, the 36-year-old proved to be remarkably courageous.





Rabia Siddique has accepted an out of court settlement from the MOD regarding sex and race discrimination against her

Helicoptered into a Basra police compound where two kidnapped SAS soldiers were being held, she battled for hours to save their lives, using her legal expertise and her Arabic to negotiate with their captors.



And when the Iraqis turned an AK47 on her and another officer, she stayed calm - even when her colleague screamed and dived for cover.



She was taunted and called a 'whore' by Iraqis holding the hostage, but refused to show any sign of weakness. And yet what she later suffered at the hands of her superiors in the British Army was, to her mind, far worse than anything that happened at Al Jameat police station on September 19, 2005.

While the other British officer who was with her was later awarded the Military Cross and promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, Rabia's only reward was to be given a hug by her commanding officer and sent to her room for a good night's sleep.



The officer who was given the MC, Major James Woodham, gave an account of that day which was later published in the book In Foreign Fields: Heroes Of Iraq and Afghanistan In Their Own Words.

Rabia's story, however, has never been told.



Having dared to question the discrepancies between the way she and Major Woodham were treated, she found herself given a posting far beneath her rank.



On Monday, Rabia, who lectured Prince William on sexual equality during his Sandhurst officer training course, settled a race and sex discrimination case against the Ministry of Defence just minutes before her case was due to be heard at Central London employment tribunal.



In the end, it was unthinkable that the MoD would allow her highly embarrassing story to come out in such a public fashion. They have agreed to pay her an undisclosed sum. Meanwhile, Rabia has resigned her commission in disgust at the way the Army has treated her.



Cynics may feel Rabia is embellishing her story for her own ends. Yet the Mail has seen the legal documents she sent to the tribunal, which corroborate what she told us this week.



Further, there was no point during the day in question in Iraq when she was not with at least one other British soldier, so she would hardly dare risk lying about her ordeal, given the high stakes of the tribunal.



And finally, she is now a government lawyer, only too aware of the repercussions of giving false testimony in this instance.



"It was never about the money," she says, speaking about her ordeal for the first time. "It was about making sure my role that day in Iraq was acknowledged and people were held to account for the way I was treated after."



She is swift to emphasise that she has no axe to grind with Major Woodham. "I have nothing against the fact that he received the Military Cross. He played a role. I played a role," she says.

And yet her recollection of the terrifying events of that day suggests that at the very least, the part she played has never properly been recognised.



Born to an Indian father and Australian mother, Rabia, a British citizen, studied law before qualifying as a barrister and solicitor in 1996.



She pursued a career in London in international law and joined the Army in 2001 as a captain in Army Legal Services. She was promoted to Acting Major in 2004, and in April 2005 was drafted in as legal adviser to the 12 Mechanised Brigade in Basra.



As a Muslim, Arab-speaking lawyer, Rabia played a crucial role, liaising with the local judiciary and dealing with a police force which had been infiltrated by the terrorists Jaish al Mahdi, a group who were loyal to the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.



"I had a recognisable Muslim name which helped me gain a rapport with the Iraqis very quickly," she explains. "I wore a hijab as a sign of respect. It was difficult work. I had to talk to men I knew were probably responsible for killing some of our people."



It was on September 19, 2005, that two plain-clothed SAS officers on counter-terrorist surveillance were illegally seized by Iraqi police officers and taken to Al Jameat police station.



Outside the compound, as temperatures soared to 120F, British troops battled to contain hundreds of angry Iraqis screaming for the execution of the men they claimed killed an Iraqi police officer.



It was just two years since six military policemen had been killed in a police station in Maysan Province and the kidnap was soon the talk of Brigade HQ.



At first Major Woodham, an army liaison officer with contacts at Al Jameat, was sent in with a team of four other officers to negotiate the captives' release.



Soon, he radioed back to HQ for help, relaying a message from an Iraqi judge that they would only deal with the woman they knew as 'Major Rabia'.



Rabia recalls: "I was told: 'You are being asked for. We need you to go in there. James isn't getting anywhere. We need to get them out.' I was sent in to do what they felt only I could do."



She threw on her body armour and helmet, grabbed an SA80 rifle and loaded her weapon while waiting for a Lynx helicopter to take her to Al Jameat.



"Flying over the city was the first time I felt fear, a terrible sense of foreboding. I was a lawyer. I was armed, but I wasn't trained in hand-to-hand combat."



By the time she landed, it was clear the situation was getting desperate. "The noise was deafening," she recalls. "The crowds were screaming and shouting. I could see armed Iraqi officers on the roof of the police station. Our soldiers were finding it hard to stop the crowd breaking in."



On the steps of Al Jameat, she was met by Major Woodham and a military interpreter. "There was a look of relief on James's face when he saw me," she says, "but the interpreter was panicky. He asked if he could be excused, and Major Woodham released him."



Inside office where she was taken, the situation was fraught.



She recalls: "It was very tense, very hostile. I remember thinking that for the first time I wasn't wearing the hijab and the men hadn't seen me without it. I felt very self-conscious.



"All sorts of accusations were flying around. They were saying that the men they had arrested were Israeli agents, that they'd killed an Iraqi police officer."

Rabia was once considered the perfect poster girl for the British Army

Over the next hour, speaking in a mixture of English and Arabic, Rabia spoke to the chief legal officer in the station, Judge Ragib, a man she had worked with before, reminding him that it was illegal to detain British soldiers under the legal agreement signed by the Iraqi Provincial Government and Coalition Forces.



"I was desperate to make sure our men were alive," she says. Throughout, she says, Major Woodham was sitting alongside her. "He tried to speak," she says, "but he was told to shut up."

At first it seemed that Rabia's skills as a lawyer were about to pay off. The judge and an Iraqi colonel said that Rabia would be taken to see the prisoners, along with a group of police officers.



"I recognised the officers as members of Jaish Al Mahdi," she says. "There was no way I was going to be split from James and I insisted he came with me."



They were taken to the cell where the men were being held.



Rabia remembers: "They were huddled in a corner, chained up and blindfolded. They had bloodstained T-shirts on and Iraqi uniform trousers."

She demanded the men were unchained and their blindfolds removed.



"They dragged the men over and plonked them down on two chairs," she says. "I told them not to worry, that we'd get them out."



But suddenly around 60 armed, plain-clothed police officers poured into the cell. "My heart was pounding but I tried to focus on the judge and keep things on a legal level," she says.



At the very moment Rabia persuaded the judge to release the men into her custody, she says, 'all hell was let loose'.



She recalls shouting and screaming, the sound of weapons being made ready and pistols being waved in the air. Outside, she could see smoke and fire and hear gunshots and explosions.



"Our two soldiers were grabbed, chained and blindfolded. James and I were thrown out of the cell, and I had this sickening fear that they were about to execute the two men. I tried to carry on talking to the judge but I could see fear on his face.



He looked at me and said: "I'm sorry. It's no longer in my hands." That was the last time I saw him. Once he had gone, I felt control slipping through my fingers. I was afraid, but mostly I was frightened for the two men. I demanded to be taken back into the cell with them.'



But the situation went from bad to worse. Rabia and Major Woodham were herded into a tiny office, filled with more police officers, Iraqi community elders and groups of angry men who surged in and out, screaming insults at the two British officers. Then, a group of men burst into the room.



"One was waving an AK47," says Rabia. "He was shouting in Arabic that his relative had been shot outside by British soldiers. He was wailing and screaming. Everything happened very quickly. James and I were standing side by side. This man turned to us and he cocked the AK47 straight at us and pulled back on the lever like he was going to shoot.



"I thought that was it. You always wonder how you will deal with a situation like that, but I went completely cold. I was staring at him and waiting for the shot."



She is clearly uncomfortable recounting what happened next, mainly out of loyalty to Major Woodham. Tribunal documents setting out Rabia's case say that 'at one stage Major Woodham hid behind the claimant'.



All Rabia will say is: "I remember James screaming "No!" and diving. Everyone reacts in those situations differently.'



"The gunman looked at James first - then he looked at me and a different look crossed his face. To this day, I'm convinced he didn't fire that weapon because there was a woman in the room."



In the chaotic scenes that followed, the man was thrown out of the office by other Iraqis. "From that moment on," admits Rabia, "my main concern was getting out alive."



Not long after, four British soldiers, part of the original team brought in by Major Woodham, were thrown into the room and after being moved to yet another office, Rabia continued speaking in Arabic, trying to persuade the Iraqis to release them.



"I tried being jovial, but they started calling me a whore and a betrayer. There was a real sense of aggression in the room, but now it was directed at me."



Just how much of a hostile target Rabia had become was soon made obvious. "We'd been in there for some time by then, and James was dying to go to the loo," she says. "A couple of police officers escorted him outside to the toilet block.



"At this stage, I asked if I could also go. They just laughed at me and said if I wanted to go I'd have to go right there.

"I said I'd go with one of the officers but the Iraqis said: 'Only whores go to the toilet with men. If you want to go, go here.' In the end, I knew I'd have to wet myself.



"The other British guys were fantastic. They could see how agitated I was and they just turned their backs and talked among themselves. It was a hideous thing to have to do and deeply humiliating, but I did my best not to show it."



At around 9pm, nearly ten hours after entering the station, Rabia and the five other officers were finally released and picked up by British Warrior armoured vehicles.



"We were probably freed at this point," explains Rabia, "because the two captive SAS officers had been moved. There was an incredible sense of relief,' she says, "but we were still completely focused on finding the other two."



Army intelligence experts quickly located the two British SAS soldiers, who were being held in a house not far from Al Jameat, and sent the Warriors to get them.



"We were in the nick of time," says Rabia. "They had been badly beaten. Their clothes had been removed, as had their underwear, which is what usually happens to prisoners about to be executed. One of them came into our tank.

"There was lots of hand-shaking and a huge sense of relief. One minute you think you are going to die, the next, it's all over. I don't think my emotions kicked in until a lot later. Pure survival instinct took over. I just tried to hold it together."

Back at HQ in the early hours of the morning, the group were given sweet tea and sandwiches and then separated.

While Major Woodham was debriefed about his ordeal - regarded as highly therapeutic and essential, in military circles - Rabia was given a hug by her commanding officer, Brigadier Lorimer.



She felt patronised by that, but tried to put it out of her head and was initially delighted when, in March 2006, she heard she had been awarded the Queen's Commendation For Valuable Service.

It was not as prestigious an award as the Military Cross, which she discovered had been awarded to Major Woodham for his role in the action, but she thought that her role in the Jameat incident had finally been recognised. She even wrote to Brigadier Lorimer to thank him.

It wasn't until a year later that Rabia discovered she had been recommended for the QCVS long before the incident.

Initially, she complained informally to her commanding officer, but was advised by senior officers not to pursue her complaint any further. One told her that 'inevitable stigma is attached to those who [seek] redress'.

But when nothing was done, she lodged a formal complaint in May 2007. Two months later, she was given the UK posting of a job she'd done three years previously - an obvious step backwards in her career.

Disgusted at the way she had been treated, Rabia finally resigned in December last year. Given what she went through, it is easy to understand her anger - all the more so in the light of Major Woodham's medal.

His Military Cross citation read: "In an exceptionally dangerous and unstable situation, with himself and his team held at gunpoint and threatened, Woodham provided a cool head and calm leadership, despite the imminent danger to life; one mistake could have triggered a bloodbath, but this was prevented by his courageous leadership and exceptional presence of mind in the face of extreme danger."

Rabia's achievements that day have never been recognised. This week, an MoD spokesman was quick to point out that while Rabia's claim has been settled, no liability has been admitted.

In the end, however, her account of that day in Al Jameat speaks for itself.

At home in the village near Salisbury in Wiltshire where she lives with her RAF officer husband Tony, Rabia is surrounded by remnants of the Army career she loved. There are photographs of her in uniform, while a military jacket still hangs on the back of a door.

Officially, she is on annual leave, waiting for her resignation to be ratified. In a couple of weeks she will take up a new job, working as a lawyer for a Government department in Central London.

By standing up to the Army and forcing them to address what she regards as its latent sexism she has, in a sense, transformed herself into a poster girl of a very different kind - a woman prepared to sacrifice her military career in the hope that other high-flying female officers don't have to suffer what she did.

She treasures a letter she received this week from the head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt. He wrote: "The Army will consider carefully your perception of the way that you were treated in the period that followed the Al Jameat incident with a view to ensuring that appropriate lessons are learned."

If they are, says Rabia, she will feel it has been worth it. "That's what I was seeking by bringing these claims in the first place."

Some might say she deserves a medal for her resolve in fighting this battle alone.





Rabia was once considered the perfect poster girl for the British Army