Nobody, not even British soldiers, should be above the law

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/23/british-soldiers-should-not-be-above-law

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I supported the second Iraq war. It seemed to me in 2003, and still does, that the world has a duty to find ways to remove regimes that commit genocide and use chemical weapons to gas their ethnic minorities.

I would have reversed every opinion I held, however, if David Cameron had been in power and his Ministry of Defence had announced: “British soldiers will be free to torture in Iraq, in breach of the Geneva convention and common law. We will cover up. When we can hide their crimes no longer, we will not pursue justice but, instead, pursue lawyers, who make claims against us, and seek to drive them out of business.”

This is now the argument of the Cameron administration, an argument it can deliver from a position of strength. In a battle between the state and lawyers who try to hold it to account, the state has always had the advantage. It can destroy its opponents’ supply lines and starve them into submission.

We are now in a grimly comic country, where in one breath Cameron rightly denounces Vladimir Putin’s contempt for the rule of law. In the next, he proposes to exempt British troops from legal accountability.

He has promised to crack down on an “industry trying to profit from spurious claims” against UK military personnel. His defence secretary. Michael Fallon, says he is so enraged by “ambulance-chasing lawyers” that he wants to stop human rights law covering troops in action.

The impression given by government and most of the press is that the interests of justice must be forgotten because innocent British troops have been the victims of a scam run by greedy lawyers. They prefer to leave the implication that they are the true victims hanging in the air because the evidence against their lachrymose fable is close to overwhelming.

Baha Mousa was killed, not in the heat of battle, but at a British army base in Basra. The army’s own official inquiry found that he had been denied food and water. His swollen and bloodied face bore the evidence of the beatings he had received and the “stress positions”, as the military euphemistically calls them, his guards had locked him in.

Meanwhile, government itself, not some shyster lawyer or bleeding-heart judge, has set up an official inquiry into allegations of “historic abuse” in Iraq. Fears that the International Criminal Court would shame the country by ordering Britain to appear before it forced Whitehall to stop stalling and investigate the alleged mistreatment of 1,514 Iraqis, including 280 who died.

The MoD is no soft touch. Yet it has paid out £20m in 326 cases without admitting liability. After actions involving Leigh Day, the law firm Cameron devotes so much time to attacking, the government paid £100,000 to the family of Saeed Shabram, who drowned after being detained by British troops. The death of Ahmed Jabbar Kareem, who drowned in a river near Basra after an alledged beating by soldiers is till being investigated. And the army dismissed three soldiers in disgrace for the abuse of Iraqi captives up to and including driving a forklift truck with a prisoner tied to its prongs.

I am with Kipling when he condemns those who make “mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep”. I have said many times that Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters will believe any lie told against this country, however outrageous, and go along with any enemy, however fascistic.

But we are not dealing with fantastical slanders, but with proved accusations of killing and torture, and hundreds of further allegations that, by the British government’s own admission, warrant either compensation or further investigation.

If you take on a ruthless government or corporation, or any collection of political or religious fanatics, you will find that they can distort all the time and expect to get away with it. But if you make one mistake they will seize on it and attempt to use it to destroy you.

Cameron proves my rule. He can divert attention from the gruesome evidence in front of our eyes because Leigh Day made one mistake. It failed to provide until a late stage evidence to the al-Sweady inquiry into the alleged misconduct of British troops after a battle north of Basra in 2004, which showed some of its clients were insurgents, not civilians.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal is investigating. Leigh Day tells me it is confident that it will see off the case. But let’s suppose it cannot. Its lawyers will be struck off or disciplined for misconduct and justice will have been done. Cameron says he also wants to sue Leigh Day for the millions it claimed in costs from the inquiry. And if his government can make a case, there will again be a kind of justice in the lawyers repaying the money.

What is both alarming and symptomatic is that the MoD is using the excuse of the firm’s alleged misconduct to try in as far as it can to place British troops beyond the rule of law. It wants to impose a collective punishment on all firms and restrict their ability and the ability of all future victims of British troops to go to law.

I once thought it was always worth watching how politicians treated foreigners because it showed how they would treat the British if they believed they could get away with it. Now that sentence needs turning on its head.

The Conservatives are only doing to foreigners what they have done to the British. They have hacked away at rights for British citizens to receive legal aid for housing, employment and in many instances immigration and child and family disputes.

The government has weakened the ability of the British citizen to review judicially the actions of the bureaucracy and is proposing to abolish the Human Rights Act. It keeps saying it will give us a British bill of rights in its stead. But we have not seen the replacement and there has been none of the open and vigorous debate a new charter would need to make it worthwhile. We will just have to take what the Conservative party gives us, apparently. Given its record in office, that is unlikely to be much.

The Cameron government will be remembered for its willingness to deny access to justice, most particularly when justice might have resulted in the bureaucracy being fined or censured. The Conservatives are ensuring that Iraqis, Afghans and Syrians will find what the British already know: that our state has become a self-protection racket.