UK Soldiers Likely To Face Iraq War Crime Charges
According to the head of a unit investigating alleged abuses, soldiers from UK may face prosecution for war crimes. Mark Warwick, a former police detective and the head of Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) stated that that some of the allegations being investigated included murder. Furthermore the investigations revealed there may be as many 1,515 victims, 280 of whom are alleged to have been unlawfully killed.
Despite all the work being done by IHAT there is a concern that the investigations is not being done in an effective manner. Carla Ferstman, of the human rights charity Redress, said: “The incredibly slow place at which IHAT is investigating allegations of criminality committed by UK soldiers against Iraqi civilians is wholly unacceptable. The controversy over the nature of investigations concerning allegations of abuse and crime during the Iraq war has been prevalent for some time now in the UK. Mark Warwick explained the slow pace of the IHAT investigations with “the complexity, the volume and the geography aspects” of their work, stressing that the IHAT is “trying to conduct ethical investigations.”
