War veteran’s fury at murder claims against British soldiers

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SCOTT D’ARCY

Sutherland Highlanders came under fire from Mahdi Army insurgents and they received back-up in the fierce battle from the 1st Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (1PWRR) – known as the Tigers.

Mr Wood, who was on a Warrior vehicle that day, said: “Obviously we became decisively engaged by a stronghold from the militia and they were dug in. I was given a command that would inevitably change my life forever.

“So we become engaged, it was an ambush – a stronghold of 20-plus enemy in a fixed location. It was a pre-ambush basically, they knew exactly what they were doing. And they started to engage our vehicles and we came to a grinding halt. We started to return fire and that was when my commanders, after about 15 to 20 minutes of exchanging gunfire, then gave the command to prepare and get out the vehicle.”

A battlefield order, intended to help identify whether a suspect in the murder of six Royal Military Police in Al Majar al’Kabir in 2003 was among the dead, resulted in the bodies of 20 Iraqis being taken to the British base at Camp Abu Naji, along with nine live captives.

The detainees were kept at the camp overnight until they were transferred and held for four months before facing the Iraqi criminal courts. After the bodies of the 20 dead had been returned to Iraqi authorities and their families, rumours began that some of the insurgents had not died in battle but had been killed at Camp Abu Naji.

Among them was the body of Hamid