LONDON: Britain opened a judge-led public inquiry yesterday into claims that its soldiers murdered and abused civilians in southern Iraq in 2004, some of the most serious allegations made against British forces over the war and occupation of the country.
The Al-Sweady Inquiry is investigating claims that up to 20 Iraqis were tortured and killed in May 2004 at a base in Maysan province after a battle between British troops and insurgents. It is named for one of the dead, 19-year-old Hamid Al-Sweady.
The British military denies abuse and says all the dead were killed in battle after ambushing British troops. Several soldiers were decorated for bravery in the engagement — dubbed the battle of Danny Boy after the checkpoint where it took place — which included the British army’s first bayonet charge in two decades.
The government ordered the inquiry after Britain’s High Court ruled that an earlier Royal Military Police investigation into the killings had been inadequate. That investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing by British troops. The inquiry was ordered almost three years ago, but the hearings had to await a lengthy police investigation, which ended with no one being charged.
Inquiry lawyer Jonathan Acton Davis is due to make an opening statement yesterday. The inquiry is expected to last a year and hear from hundreds of witnesses, including several Iraqis who will travel to London to give evidence. The inquiry is opening just before the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Allegations of abuse dogged the six-year British deployment, which ended in 2009. The most infamous was the case of hotel receptionist Baha Mousa, whose death in a detention facility outside the city of Basra led to the first conviction of a British soldier.
Britain begins inquiry into Iraq abuse claims
Britain begins inquiry into Iraq abuse claims
UK’s Lammy repeats calls for ceasefire after talk with Blinken on Middle East
- David Lammy: ‘The best way forward is an immediate ceasefire and to get back to a political solution’
- David Lammy: ‘I urge UK nationals to leave, because the situation on the ground is fast moving’
LONDON: British foreign minister David Lammy repeated calls for an immediate ceasefire amid reports of a potential escalation in the Israel-Lebanon conflict, after discussing the matter with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the phone on Monday.
“We’ve both seen the reports in the media about a next phase for Israel in Lebanon,” Lammy told Sky News, amid growing indications that Israel was on the verge of sending ground troops into Lebanon.
“We both agreed the position that we had at the UN last week that the best way forward is an immediate ceasefire and to get back to a political solution.”
Earlier in the day a spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer urged “all parties to show restraint.”
Lammy also repeated the government’s advice that British citizens leave Lebanon.
“We have secured places on commercial flights that are flying tomorrow so that UK nationals can get out. I urge them to leave, because the situation on the ground is fast moving,” he said.
“Whilst we will do everything we can to protect British nationals and those plans are in place to do so, we cannot anticipate the circumstances and the speed with which we could do that if things escalate in a major way over the coming hours and days.”
Israel court says Palestinian body can be held for hostage deal
- There are currently more than 9,600 Palestinian prisoners in Israel, according to civil society organizations monitoring prisons
- Israel has been holding the bodies of dozens of Palestinians for years, including the remains of members of armed groups killed during clashes that caused Israeli casualties
JERUSALEM: Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday ruled authorities have the right to hold the body of a Palestinian prisoner to aid hostage negotiations, rejecting an appeal for return of the corpse.
Walid Daqqa — a Palestinian of Israeli nationality — died from cancer while still in custody in April.
He had spent 38 years in detention for the kidnapping and murder of an Israeli soldier in 1984.
After his death, his remains were held by Israeli authorities due to negotiations then underway for an exchange between Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons, and hostages as well as the bodies of dead captives held by Hamas militants in Gaza.
“The military command has the authority to order the holding of the bodies of terrorists for the purposes of negotiations, including the bodies of terrorists who are citizens of Israel,” the court said in a statement.
Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people on the Israel side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
There are currently more than 9,600 Palestinian prisoners in Israel, according to civil society organizations monitoring prisons.
The court’s decision drew criticism from Adalah, an advocacy group for Arab minority rights in Israel, which had filed the appeal.
“The Israeli Supreme Court has sanctioned the government’s brutal policy of withholding the bodies of Palestinians, including citizens of Israel, purely based on security assessments of their potential value to be exploited as bargaining chips in negotiations for Jewish Israeli hostages,” the group said in a statement.
Israel has been holding the bodies of dozens of Palestinians for years, including the remains of members of armed groups killed during clashes that caused Israeli casualties.
Two-thirds of Gaza buildings damaged in war
- High-resolution imagery collected on Sept. 3 and 6 showed clear deterioration, UN Satellite Center says
GENEVA: Two-thirds of the buildings in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed since the Gaza war began in October 2023, the UN said.
Updating its damage assessment, the UN Satellite Center, or UNOSAT, said very high-resolution imagery collected on Sept. 3 and 6 showed a clear deterioration.
“This analysis ... shows that two-thirds of the total structures in the Gaza Strip have sustained damage,” UNOSAT said.
“Those 66 percent of damaged buildings in the Gaza Strip account for 163,778 structures in total,” it said.
The last assessment, based on images from early July, determined that 63 percent of structures in the Palestinian territory had been damaged.
Monday’s update said the damage now included “52,564 structures that have been destroyed; 18,913 severely damaged; 35,591 possibly damaged structures; and 56,710 moderately affected.”
Gaza City has been notably affected, with 36,611 structures destroyed, it added.
UNOSAT and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said that approximately 68 percent of the permanent crop fields in the Gaza Strip showed “a significant decline in health and density” in September.
Hamas’s unprecedented Oct. 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,615 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the territory’s Health Ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.
Part of the UN Institute for Training and Research, or UNITAR, Geneva-based UNOSAT says its satellite imagery analysis helps the humanitarian community assess the extent of conflict-related damage and helps shape emergency relief efforts.
“Over the past year, UNOSAT’s team has worked tirelessly to provide the world with precise and timely insights into the impact of the conflict on buildings and infrastructure in Gaza,” said UNITAR’s executive director Nikhil Seth.
Critics highlight that from the time a UN General Assembly vote paved the way for Israel’s establishment in 1948, the country has ignored numerous UN resolutions and international court rulings without consequences.
Israel has always snubbed Resolution 194, which guarantees the Palestinians expelled in 1948 from the territory Israel conquered the right to return or to compensation.
It has also ignored rulings condemning its forceful acquisition of territory and the annexation of East Jerusalem after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and the continuing and expanding settlement policy in the West Bank, among others.
Man arrested after breaking into Moroccan embassy in Sweden
- The perpetrator, who has not yet been identified, is suspected of breaking and entering, aggravated vandalism and causing bodily injury, after shattered glass from a window fell on a passerby on the street, they added
STOCKHOLM: A man was arrested on Monday after breaking into Morocco’s embassy in Stockholm and smashing windows before hanging a rainbow flag from a window, police said.
Police stormed the building and arrested the man, who daily newspaper Aftonbladet said was armed with a knife and had barricaded himself in a room.
The man’s motive was not immediately known, police said.
The perpetrator, who has not yet been identified, is suspected of breaking and entering, aggravated vandalism and causing bodily injury, after shattered glass from a window fell on a passerby on the street, they added.
“The person was not seriously injured and was going to seek medical help on their own,” police said.
The embassy has yet to respond to AFP’s request for comment.
Gaza children ‘extremely impacted’ by war: UNICEF
- Jonathan Crickx: ‘You see children who are not allowed to have the life of normal children, no education, no play, no joy’
- Crickx: ‘You see a lot of children carrying these dirty yellow plastic jerrycans’ with up to 25 liters of water
JERUSALEM: Nearly a year of devastating war has left Gaza’s 2.4 million people enduring a humanitarian tragedy, with children in the besieged territory the most vulnerable, a UNICEF official told AFP in an interview.
Jonathan Crickx, the UN agency’s spokesman for the Palestinian territories, has returned this month from a week-long mission to Gaza, still heavily impacted even as Israel shifts its military focus to Lebanon.
He talked to AFP about the plight of Gaza’s children, who have not had a single day of education since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7.
“You see children who are not allowed to have the life of normal children, no education, no play, no joy,” Crickx said.
“The faces of these children are... so sad.”
Most children he saw in the war-battered Palestinian territory were helping their family as they no longer had classes to attend.
“So, you see a lot of children carrying these dirty yellow plastic jerrycans” with up to 25 liters of water, he said.
“I’ve seen children pushing these jerrycans with a broken wheelchair, trying to bring water, which is one of the major issues... in the Gaza Strip.”
Crickx said it was heartbreaking to see children, some as young as five or six, trying to find food for their families.
They are “walking in huge piles of garbage and trying to get whatever they can,” he said.
“These children are extremely impacted by the violence and the bombings and insecurity they have been through for a year.”
Crickx vividly remembers his conversation with Ahmad, a 10-year-old Gazan boy who lived with his family in a displacement camp in southern Gaza.
The boy’s uncle had died a horrific death, Crickx said.
Ahmad “was saying things that a 10-year-old should not tell you, how the body was in pieces, how the head was far away,” he recalled.
“This is extremely intense and difficult to hear from a 10-year-old child.”
Many children in Gaza have lost at least one of their parents, said Crickx.
Exact figures are unavailable, “but the frequency at which we meet with those children is very high,” he said.
UNICEF estimates that there are 19,000 children who are unaccompanied or have been separated from their parents, he said.
On top of that, not a single school is functioning across Gaza, he said, and 85 percent of all school buildings have been destroyed by the fighting.
“You have the entire population of school-aged children who didn’t attend a single hour of class in the past 12 months,” Crickx said.
“What is really striking is how they want to go to school, how they want to play with their friends, how they want to see their teachers... education, learning give hope.”
UN agencies and aid groups have warned of the spread of preventable disease and other health risks compounded by the war.
“With a very high level of density of people, extremely bad hygiene conditions, high temperatures, too little access to a bathroom, it’s the perfect, terrible recipe for the emergence of diseases,” Crickx said.
Many children are sick and need treatment, but most hospitals across Gaza are not functioning.
“This situation is really leading to children not getting the proper treatment that they need,” Crickx said.
He said he had met four children in northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital who were suffering from cancer or heart problems.
“These children actually need an immediate medical evacuation (or) they will not make it,” he said.
