Major facing eighth Iraq inquiry quits Army in protest
A DECORATED major facing his eighth investigation over the death of an Iraqi teenager 15 years ago has given his medals back and quit the Army in protest.
Major Robert Campbell, who was wounded in the line of duty, became so disillusioned he returned his medals to the Queen, it emerged last night.
Buckingham Palace confirmed it sent the major a letter in response, which he described as “very touching”.
Major Campbell, who serves in the Royal Engineers, said his decision to resign was a consequence of his career having been “poisoned” by a series of inquiries into the death of the Iraqi in 2003.
Ministers are now under growing pressure to shut down the Iraq Fatality Investigations (IFI) inquiry, which is investigating Major Campbell and other Iraq war veterans.
In a post on Facebook, Major Campbell wrote yesterday: “I leave the Army in six weeks’ time, after yet another stay in Headley Court [the rehabilitation unit], with only a pair of hearing aids and a disabled badge for my car.”
He added: “Last year, at a particular low point, I returned my medals to Her Majesty… I received a very touching, but private letter from the Palace, followed a few weeks later by a letter from the Army Secretariat stating I can have them back if I have a change of heart.”
The Daily Telegraph disclosed how Major Campbell had been “broken” by the “sordid process” of successive investigations into the death of Said Shabram, a 19-year-old who drowned in Basra in May 2003. The major, who has been cleared on several occasions
concerns over his links to the IRA. The East German secret police, the Stasi, also kept a file on a Labour peace group which Mr Corbyn helped to run, in the hope that it could influence British defence policy through Labour MPS who supported disarmament.
Sir Richard, who worked against the STB during an MI6 posting in communist Czechoslovakia early in his career, says that “everything I learnt about the way the STB operated tells me that these accusations should be taken seriously”.
He suggests that while Mr Corbyn would not have been party to sensitive matters of national security, the Stb’s interest in him would have been to tell them about the goings-on in the Labour Party so they could identify possible recruits who might be “vulnerable” to an approach.
The STB had a “well established pattern” of recruiting MPS, Sir Richard says, and “even had he been so naive that he did not see through Sarkocy’s diplomatic cover” the Czechoslovakian regime was still “one of the nastiest in Europe” with a policy of persecuting dissidents.
Sir Richard says that if Mr Corbyn only had “a couple” of meetings with Mr Sarkocy his behaviour amounts to “stupidity” but if Mr Sarkocy is telling the truth about many more meetings taking place then “this affair takes on a completely different aspect”.
A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: “Richard Dearlove, who as head of MI6 was involved in the infamous dodgy dossier that helped take us into the disastrous Iraq war, should not be trying to give credence to these entirely false and ridiculous smears.”
Mr Corbyn’s spokesman has previously said that the Labour leader “has not been aware of who has been an undercover officer working for any intelligence agency or attempting to infiltrate any organisation”.