A legal scandal

THIS paper has always had enormous faith and pride in Britain’s armed forces. Today our belief in them stands vindicated after a rigorous inquiry into mendacious allegations brought by nine Iraqis detained by our troops in 2004.

Former High Court judge Sir Thayne Forbes finds charges that British soldiers tortured, murdered and mutilated detainees were ‘conscious and deliberate lies’ and ‘utterly without foundation’.

Indeed, the scandal is that all this could have been established a decade ago, if only the British legal team acting for the detainees had agreed to co- operate with the defence ministry’s original investigation.

But no. Sensing a money- spinner for themselves, Phil Shiner’s unscrupulous Public Interest Lawyers held out for this full judge-led inquiry.

The sickening upshot is that taxpayers are £31million the poorer, while Mr Shiner’s contemptible firm has trousered £900,000 in fees.

But there’s another layer to this scandal that goes deeper than the need for action to stop ambulance-chasing lawyers from fleecing the public.

For these fabricated claims against the heroes of The Battle of Danny Boy come at a moment when the US Senate has exposed incontrovertible proof that American agents routinely and savagely tortured detainees.

This wasn’t a case of causing discomfort for a single night after the heat of battle. This was systematic, medieval brutality, inflicted for months and years on end.

What we don’t know is just how deeply British agents were implicated in this stain on civilisation.

Unlike the malicious fantasies of Mr Shiner’s clients – or, dare we say it, the i mmeasurably more trivial matter of celebrity voicemail hacking – this is a question that surely demands the full attention of a judge-led inquiry.