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WOULD CAPTAIN GALE Nugent, head of the Special Investigations Branch in Basra in September 2003, have acted with greater urgency if she had received Captain Moutarde’s written report, the one he relayed to his commanding officer the night the death was first reported? Would learning about ‘restraint’ being applied immediately prior to the prisoner’s collapse have prompted her to act differently? Would she have activated the investigation sooner if Sergeant Colley had rung her back after seeing the other detainees and told her about their condition? Or if Captain Seeds had informed her of the state of those men after he had attended to them during the night? Given that the exact content of the conversations Captain Nugent had with Moutarde, Colley and anyone else has never been revealed, these questions remain hypothetical.

Whatever information was actually transmitted late on 15 September, it was only in the morning of the 16th that Nugent assigned one of her team to the case. Even then, a lack of anxiety was evident. Captain Nugent dispatched a relatively junior officer under her command, Staff Sergeant Sherrie Cooper, alone to see what had gone on.

Not that SSgt Cooper was inexperienced. She had been in the forces since 1985 and a member of the RMP since 1988. It was only in 1999 that she had become an investigator. She was then a member of the SIB and had specialised in fraud cases after 2002 before deploying to Iraq in June 2003. It wasn’t clear what expertise she had acquired in investigating crimes of the magnitude of murder or multiple torture. Nonetheless, having received her orders from Captain Nugent, she opened a case-file diary, as was the normal procedure. This was supposed to record every step taken by the investigators, registering anything of importance that would be useful or relevant to the inquiry. SSgt Cooper’s first step was recorded as attending Shaibah hospital to confirm that Baha Mousa’s body was there. The hospital was next to the army base where Cooper was stationed. It was a short walk to the morgue. She had photographs of the body taken to record the visible bruises and grazing to the face and stomach.

Next, she journeyed into Basra to the Iraqi teaching hospital to find a pathologist. But they were out on strike. This set in train the arrangements for summoning Dr Ian Hill from the UK to undertake the post-mortem.

Having dealt with these formalities, SSgt Cooper drove to Battle Group Main where the death had occurred. She had no investigatory team with her. She was in sole charge of the case. And it was her understanding that she had to find out ‘what had happened and who was involved’. This wasn’t such a simple task.

On arriving at the base SSgt Cooper went to see Captain Moutarde and Lt Col Mendonça. They were to provide her with a briefing about the incident. Moutarde’s report (compiled the evening before and containing the description of Baha Mousa as a suspect in the August RMP killings, and his attempt to remove cuffs and sandbag hood before being restrained immediately prior to his death) would have been the adjutant’s and the CO’s main source of information. They would also have been able to say a little about the circumstances of the detainees’ arrest, how as part of a large and coordinated sweep of hotels suspected of some involvement in either criminal or insurgent activity in Basra, an operation they called ‘Salerno’, A Company of 1QLR had entered the Hotel al-Haitham, had found a couple of Kalashnikovs, some grenades and a pistol in a locked bathroom, had arrested nine Iraqis there and returned them to Battle Group Main for questioning. Whatever story was communicated, Cooper doesn’t appear to have stayed around the base for very long. The next entry in the case diary records that she went to see the battalion’s intelligence officer, Major Michael Peebles. He was in his office down the corridor from the CO.

Peebles, recently promoted to the rank of major, had various jobs in 1QLR, but all were related to ‘intelligence’ in one form or another. SSgt Cooper would have been sent to see him because he was the Battle Group internment review officer (BGIRO). It was a position unknown to Major Peebles prior to embarking for Iraq, he would say later. It was specifically created for the occupation. Lt Col Mendonça had had to brief him on what it entailed. The BGIRO was to oversee the procedures for the arrest, questioning and treatment of all detainees for the Battle Group. He reported directly to his CO and was supported by a provost sergeant and his team of guards. The provost sergeant was responsible for the actual handling process. Their care of internees was only supposed to be temporary. Within fourteen hours of arrest, anyone detained should have been released or sent on to the Theatre Internment Facility at Camp Bucca. That was the ground rule.

Major Peebles’ position made him the most senior officer with direct control over Baha Mousa and the nine other detainees during their time at Battle Group Main. He was the right person for SSgt Cooper to see.

When Cooper entered Peebles’ office she immediately sensed a problem; he appeared to be undertaking his own investigation. She saw him instructing those under his command to ‘question people and collect information’. This was not helpful. The SIB had exclusive charge of any serious investigation. It had to be this way. Their inquiries could be jeopardised if some line officer began to trample on evidence and interfere with witness testimony. SSgt Cooper politely told Major Peebles to stop. According to Cooper’s log entry, Peebles attempted to explain himself. She reported him as saying that ‘questions were being asked at parliamentary level’. How he knew this wasn’t clear. But Peebles did as instructed and agreed to cease his own inquiries.

Before leaving Battle Group Main, SSgt Cooper was shown the detention facility and the room where Baha Mousa died. Both were empty. No order was given to seal the area. Nor was there an intensive attempt to take statements from those who may have witnessed events. But then, by that time, the detainees had already been taken from Battle Group Main. They had been loaded on to a Bedford truck at 8.30 that morning and driven off towards Camp Bucca. And with them had gone a large number of soldiers responsible for guarding them. They were away for a large part of the day, away from the base, and away from the RMP.