Write a historical paper on British armed forces served in Iraq in circumstances that were very stressful, often chaotic and always dangerous.
In August of 2003, tempers boiled over in the 1st Battalion The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment when Captain David “Dai” Jones was blown up by a roadside bomb while in a military ambulance and three members of the Royal Military Police were killed when gunmen opened fire on their civilian Jeep. The deaths led to a crackdown on insurgents.
On 14 September 2003, members of Captain Jones’ unit raided the Haitham Hotel in Basra, taking into custody ten men when they found “AK47s, sub-machine guns, pistols, fake ID cards and military clothing.” Rifles, bayonets and suspected bomb-making equipment were also found at the scene. One of the men taken to the British military base was Baha Mousa, a 26-year-old hotel receptionist, whose wife had recently died of cancer, aged 22.
While in detention, Mousa and the other captives were interrogated about any possible links to the recent attack or their ties to insurgent groups. They were hooded, severely beaten and assaulted by a number of British troops. Two days later Mousa was found dead in the interrogation room (a post-mortem examination found that Mousa suffered multiple injuries – at least 93 – including fractured ribs and a broken nose, which were “in part” the cause of his death).
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