Iraqi families launch legal battle over civilian deaths

The furore over the behaviour of British troops in Iraq shifts was today shifting to the courts, where Iraqi families are launching a legal bid for compensation over the deaths of civilians.

The furore over the behaviour of British troops in Iraq shifts was today shifting to the courts, where Iraqi families are launching a legal bid for compensation over the deaths of civilians.

Lawyers representing 14 Iraqi families with relatives allegedly killed by British soldiers are lodging papers at the High Court in London seeking a judicial review.

One of the cases is reported to be that of Baha Mousa, a hotel receptionist allegedly killed in Basra last September by soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, which has been at the centre of unconnected allegations of prisoner abuse.

The lawyers involved include a barrister from Matrix Chambers - the chambers of the Prime Minister's wife, Cherie Blair - and the Birmingham-based Public Interest Lawyers.

Yesterday, the Government warned the lives of British troops in Iraq may have been put at risk by the publication of photographs apparently showing British soldiers torturing and abusing an Iraqi prisoner.

Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram said the military authorities would leave "no stone unturned" in their efforts to establish the truth behind the pictures published in the Daily Mirror on Friday.

In a Commons statement, Mr Ingram called on the Mirror to co-operate fully with the inquiry into the abuse allegations being carried out by the Royal Military Police Special Investigation Branch (SIB).

He insisted the claims - said to involve soldiers from The Queen's Lancashire Regiment - were already undermining the work of the Armed Forces trying to restore stability in Iraq.

"These allegations have been put right across the Arab world and also into Iraq," he told MPs.

"There is always a question of lives being put at risk because of what may prove to be unfounded allegations, so it is on the conscience of those who run it in this way."

While he said that the Ministry of Defence had taken the photographs at face value, he confirmed that the SIB was examining their authenticity.

In an editorial, the Mirror has said that it had "no doubt" the photographs were genuine and that the story they revealed was "as real as it is horrifying".

However, former members of the regiment and some other newspapers have said that the pictures appeared to be staged and that some of the equipment carried by the troops in the photographs was not used in Iraq.

Mr Ingram said that SIB investigating officers were in touch with the Mirror, which had so far handed over some 20 photographs to the MoD.

He urged the paper to pass on the names of the two soldiers from The Queen's Lancashire Regiment who had made the allegations so that their claims could be investigated, adding he was confident those with information would be "treated fairly and lawfully".

There was anger among both Labour and Tory MPs at the way the Mirror had chosen to publish the pictures despite the concerns over their authenticity.

Labour MP Mark Hendrick warned that if the pictures were proved to be fraudulent the paper would become known as the "dodgy daily", while another Labour backbencher, Janet Anderson, said that if they were faked, the editor, Piers Morgan, should resign.

Shadow defence secretary Nicholas Soames called for "the most vigorous and detailed investigations to restore the good name of the British Army".

The chairman of the Commons Defence Committee, Bruce George, told Channel 4 News yesterday that Mr Morgan could be called to give evidence to the committee.

"I shall put before the members of the committee the option of inviting the editor of the Mirror to come before us to explain how he got hold of those pictures," he said.

"Was there any payment made? Is he convinced these pictures are genuine? What efforts did he make to ensure these pictures were genuine?"

In the Commons, however, there was also concern expressed yesterday about the treatment of Iraqi detainees by both British and American forces.

The Prime Minister's human rights envoy to Iraq, Ann Clwyd, said prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail - where US soldiers have been photographed abusing detainees - were held "virtually incommunicado" under rules that had never been made public.

"It must be made perfectly clear to the US military as well as our own that the Geneva Conventions must apply in all cases where prisoners are being held," she said.

Mr Ingram acknowledged that the Government was expecting a legal challenge from lawyers seeking to establish whether the British forces operating in Iraq were subject to the European Convention on Human Rights.

"The best judgment that I have is that the ECHR does not apply. I assume that will be tested in law because there does seem to be a community out there that will seek to do just that," he said.

He said that of 33 investigations into civilian death, injury or ill-treatment involving British troops, 15 of the 21 completed had found there was no case to answer while possible action was being considered in six cases.