Admit Your Guilty! -Someone Show This To BUSHCO Please!

[kpete]

UK admits breaching human rights convention over detainee's death·
MoD facing huge payout after troops broke law

· Case involves abuse of nine Iraqis held in 2003

Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian, Friday March 28 2008

The government is to admit "substantive breaches" of the European Convention on Human Rights over the death and torture of Iraqi civilians in the custody of British soldiers, Des Browne, the defence secretary, revealed yesterday.

The admission, which could cost the Ministry of Defence millions of pounds in compensation, relates to the death of Baha Mousa, a Basra hotel receptionist, and the abuse of eight other Iraqi civilians while held in a British detention centre during a weekend in September 2003. Mousa had 93 identifiable injuries on his body and suffered asphyxiation. In response to claims by Daoud Musa al-Maliki, Mousa's father, and the other Iraqis, the government is to admit the breaches of article three of the convention which guarantees the right to life and prohibits torture.

The move, announced by Browne in a written Commons statement, follows years of battles in the British courts. In the end, the law lords dismissed the MoD's case that British troops on overseas operations were not covered by European human rights law, leaving the MoD with little choice but to admit guilt and offer compensation. Leigh Day, the law firm acting for the Iraqis, has agreed to stay court proceedings until the end of June. In the meantime, both sides have agreed to mediation under the former lord chief justice, Lord Woolf. The Iraqis are claiming exemplary and aggravated damages from the MoD, Leigh Day said.

more at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/28/humanrights.military