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The US-led and NATO supported invasion of Iraq in 2003 has claimed the lives of nearly 170,000 civilians; and despite the conclusion of U.S. combat in 2010, repercussions of the Iraq War and blatant imperial policy continue to wreak havoc on the Shia majority nation.

But apart from the outright combat and unintended civilian deaths, the West’s operations in Iraq were rampant with abuse and allegations of torture, the fruit of which may yet be seen in war crime convictions for UK soldiers.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on 3 January, Mark Warwick, head of the United Kingdom’s ‘Iraq Historic Allegations Team’ said he expects investigators to compile enough evidence of murder and unlawful killing to bring significant charges against soldiers.

"I feel there is significant evidence to be obtained to put a strong case before the Service Prosecuting Authority to prosecute and charge," Warwick said.

The ‘Iraq Historic Allegations Team’ has compiled a roster of upwards of 1,500 alleged victims, 280 of which are said be victims of unlawful killings by British forces.

The UK Ministry of Defense created the IHAT in 2010 in order to investigate accusations of abuse and torture committed by British troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. At its inception, the number of alleged victims was 152, but that number grew exponentially, and by 2015 IHAT quarterly shows the number of alleged victims to be over 1,500.

According to IHAT’s latest quarterly report, its main objectives include “Allegations of unlawful killings in the custody/care/control of British Forces; Allegations of the unlawful killings of juveniles; Allegations of unlawful killings outside of custody; Allegations of serious ill-treatment including GBH, rape, sexual assault; Allegations of ill-treatment that may meet the war crimes threshold; Allegations of ill-treatment not meeting war crimes threshold.”

Although seemingly comprehensive, human rights groups and lawyers are concerned that the investigations are cosmetic at best, pointing out that since IHAT was created in 2010, there has not been a single prosecution resulting from its investigations.

In an interview with British newspaper The Independent, Carla Ferstman, the director of human rights group Redress called on the British government to be more proactive in their approach to abuse allegations. “Things seem to still be moving at a snail’s pace,” she said, adding that “This cannot be a whitewash.”



One of the more notorious cases that brought IHAT to wide public attention was that of Baha Mousa, a receptionist at an Iraqi hotel who was restrained and beaten to death by British soldiers in 2003.

The treatment of Mousa was found to violate several tenets of the Geneva Conventions as well as British law, and the death of the innocent 26 year-old father-of-two became a powerful example of the flagrant violations of international human rights law being committed by soldiers in Iraq.

Corporal Donald Payne was implicated in the report detailing these abuses and became the first member of the British army to be convicted of a war crime. He served only 12 months in prison.

The chairman of the 2011 inquiry, Sir William Gage, noted the “heavy responsibility” British soldiers bore for the tragedy, yet denied an “entrenched culture of violence” in the British Army.