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MODERN WARFARE FOR the British Army is like modern politics: substance may matter but so does image. A poor press review, an unsympathetic storyline, a condemnatory article can hurt. For the higher military echelons it tastes like defeat; and a defeat that can lead to long-term damage: budget cuts, reduced influence, embarrassment.

The army couldn’t afford bad publicity when it came to Iraq; they were already labouring under a globally unpopular intervention. To add to that weight of scorn was the last thing they needed. A media operations division was established in Basra immediately after the invasion to meet the demands of the insatiable industry of news and to keep some control over the truth of the occupation. Tens of liaison officers, communication experts and support staff, drawn from across the services, were brought together to facilitate the army’s media management. They were based at Basra International Airport.

On 17 September, the officer commanding the media operations unit informed an RMP officer at Division, Major West, that three of his drivers had seen something at Battle Group Main a couple of days before. Major West quickly telephoned Captain Gale Nugent at the SIB with their names. They promised to be the first uncompromised witnesses of events in the detention facility where Baha Mousa died. It was a breakthrough in the making.

Captain Nugent dispatched one of her investigators to interview the three men the next day. Sergeant Birch drove to the airport and managed to track down only one of them: Lance Corporal James Riley.

Riley had joined media ops in June 2003. He’d been posted as the transport manager and assigned responsibility for driving TV and press crews about the region. It soon became apparent that the evidence he had to give would be crucial. Although Riley couldn’t speak to Sergeant Birch for long, he was able to make a brief statement about what he had seen.

A GMTV news team had been visiting the region between 14 and 16 September. Cordelia Kretzschmar, a young correspondent who had only recently joined the programme, was making her name, taking the opportunities offered by the army to satisfy that increasing desire for ‘embedded’ reportage. On this occasion, though, she was only to be shown around, to meet some of the commanders in the field, trying to construct a story about life in Basra now that the war was over. She wanted to interview some Iraqis to discover how life had improved now that the British were in control. She had a cameraman and sound recordist with her.

The obvious place to take the GMTV crew was Basra Central. That meant visiting Battle Group Main given that 1QLR were responsible for security in the city. The plan was to take the reporter to see the commanding officer to obtain some background information.

Riley was one of the drivers assigned to carry the GMTV team into Basra. They arrived at 1QLR’s compound in two ‘snatch’ Land Rovers at about lunchtime on Monday 15th. It was quite a gathering; apart from the TV people there were two drivers, Riley and Lance Bombardier Richard Betteridge, a ‘top cover’ (a soldier who had a weapon prepared and drawn, ready to fire, watching from the roof of a vehicle to respond to any threat), Senior Aircraftman Scott Hughes, and a couple of chaperoning officers.

The Land Rovers pulled into Battle Group Main, drove the few hundred yards down the dusty compound road from the main entrance and parked outside the main accommodation block. They had pulled up about twenty yards from the detention facility, where a small group of soldiers were hanging about, sitting, ambling, lying in the midday heat and glare.

The officers immediately escorted the TV reporter and crew to see the commanding officer. Riley, Betteridge and Hughes were ordered to stay put in case they had to leave quickly. It was a normal precaution.

It was also normal for troops standing down within an army facility to unload their weapons. They were supposed to do so somewhere safe. The designated site at Battle Group Main happened to be next to the detention facility at the walled edge of the compound. Soon after arriving all three men went to make sure their rifles had no ammunition in their chambers. Riley told Sergeant Birch that as he went to unload his weapon he walked past the detention block and looked into the doorway. A number of men, obviously Iraqi, were sitting cross-legged on the floor, in a line, heads covered by sandbags, hands tied, palms together as though in supplication, arms stretched out in front of them, shoulder height. There was a lot of shouting; loud, like an irritated teacher. ‘No sleep, Grandad,’ Riley heard.

Riley returned to his vehicle, putting his rifle back into the Land Rover. He recalled to Birch that he had seen three British soldiers at the detention block that he would recognise again: two youngsters, about twenty and eighteen, he thought, wearing 1QLR insignia, and a third, older than the others, in his thirties, stocky, brown-haired, gap-toothed, about five feet ten, dressed in standard desert issue fatigues and boots. He appeared to be the one in charge. He didn’t have 1QLR identification badges, but the way he carried himself, the physical presence he emitted, suggested that he was the man giving the orders.

Leaning against the Land Rovers waiting for the TV people to return, Riley saw the oldest soldier bring one of the sandbagged men to the Portaloo, which was set against the outside wall of the detention block. The soldier shouted continuously, telling the man piercingly to ‘hurry up, hurry up’, and after a few minutes, maybe less, to ‘get out, get out’. When the man emerged from the toilet, the soldier wound a plastic line around his wrists and led him back into the block.

Perhaps after ten minutes or so, curiosity overcame all three of the media soldiers. They walked over to the facility to see what was going on. Riley told Sergeant Birch that he looked inside one of the doorways and saw a sandbagged detainee, sitting cross-legged on the floor, facing the wall. He had his arms outstretched with his wrists bound by cable. Riley saw him fall backwards and lie still. The stocky, gap-toothed soldier came back into the room and began shouting again, ‘get up, get up’, and forcing him back into position. The man fell again and the soldier shouted again. It was almost ritualistic.

Riley heard one of the other guards say ‘Look at this’, indicating the other room in the block. Riley looked inside. There were four more detainees there, heads also covered with sandbags, facing the wall, cross-legged, arms out in front of them. The stocky soldier entered the room and announced ‘This is the chorus’, laughing. With that, the stocky soldier lined the prisoners up and gave a kick to each one. And with each kick came a groan or a shriek at a slightly different pitch: this was the ‘choir’. The soldiers giggled at the macabre joke.

Riley and Betteridge walked away, back to the Land Rovers. SAC Hughes, Riley said, stayed at the detention block, talking with one of the younger guards. He was there for about twenty minutes until he also came back to the vehicles. The GMTV crew and officers returned, the drivers prepared their weapons, and they all left in convoy. Neither Riley nor the other two said a thing as they drove away.

LCpl Riley didn’t have time to say any more to Sergeant Birch. He was called away to return to his duties. But Birch had enough. He brought the account back to the SIB. As Captain Nugent and her colleagues had hoped, it provided the first shard of testimony about the abuse as it was happening. It substantiated some of the complaints made by the detainees, as well as explained their injuries. It was a significant development, as police officers are fond of saying. Here was an independent witness, untainted by association with the suspect soldiers of 1QLR, who had seen maltreatment and could probably identify the men involved. And there were two other witnesses who could presumably verify Riley’s testimony. It promised to be a perfect triangulation of evidence which prosecutors adore.

It might have been the breakthrough the SIB needed, but Riley’s story betrayed a double irony – and a tragedy too. The irony? Here was a media-operations engagement taking a TV film crew almost unerringly straight to within spitting distance of a story that would have instantly wrecked the army’s whole media strategy. And here too was a TV film crew searching for a story parking a few yards away from one of the most shocking revelations of the Iraq War. And missing it.

The tragedy? That chance visit could have saved Baha Mousa’s life. If the GMTV crew had had an inkling of something happening in the facility, if they had heard a cry or a shout and had been intrigued, if the media drivers had said something to their officers when they had returned from speaking to the CO, even spoken in front of the glamorous reporter and her technicians, then it’s hard to believe Baha Mousa would have been killed as he was. Their visit had been several hours before he received his final fatal beating. An intervention on that Monday lunchtime would surely have stopped the abuse there and then.

But that didn’t happen. Nothing was said until the next day. And then it was too late.