23

THE SPECIAL INVESTIGATION branch of the Royal Military Police based in Basra was now deep into its third day of inquiries. The team needed to take stock. Staff sergeants Cooper and Jay, WO Spence and Captain Nugent sat down to consider the current state of their investigations.

They must have been fairly pleased with themselves. They had an independent witness in LCpl Riley with the prospect of two others to follow (SAC Hughes and LBdr Betteridge). They had initial statements from the surviving detainees and photographic evidence of their injuries. They had a post-mortem arranged and photographs of the state of the corpse, which already indicated a massive assault had occurred sometime prior to death. And now they had two men of Anzio Company, Private Aaron Cooper and LCpl Redfearn, placed by their own admission at the scene when Baha Mousa had collapsed and died. Whether these soldiers were complicit in the death, assailants or material witnesses had yet to be established. But the shape of the case was beginning to form.

The next step was to interview Private Cooper and LCpl Redfearn under caution, to treat them as suspects. An RAF legal advisor, Flight Lieutenant Hughes, was driven over from Division headquarters in Basra airport to speak with the two men. He took so long taking instructions from Private Cooper that they decided to postpone any further action until the following day, 19 September. Cooper and Redfearn were taken to separate quarters and left alone for the night.

Late the next morning, Sergeant Gordon of the SIB was assigned the task of interviewing Private Cooper. A room with a portable air-conditioning unit and a tape recorder on the desk was provided. All interviews had to be undertaken in pairs so SSgt Sherrie Cooper sat in to help with particular questions if needed. They had arranged for Sergeant Palmer from 1QLR to be there. He was to act as the battalion’s observer, but there was nothing really for him to do other than watch. And, of course, Private Cooper was present, recently cautioned, with Flt Lt Hughes accompanying him as his legal counsel. The room was crowded.

Questioning began.

For an hour Sergeant Gordon doggedly asked questions about the detainees. When were they arrested? What happened at the hotel? What happened when they returned to Battle Group Main? Who did what to whom?

Private Cooper’s responses were repetitive.

Gordon asked ‘Yesterday afternoon I arrested you on suspicion of being concerned in the death of Mr Baha Mousa, is that correct?’

Cooper said ‘No comment.’

Gordon asked ‘OK, at 17.35 hours you was then taken by myself to the cookhouse here on camp where you was fed, had a drink and returned to, once again, to 61 Section SIB at 18.10 hours, is that correct?’

Cooper said ‘No comment.’

It was exasperating. Sergeant Gordon explained to Flt Lt Hughes and Private Cooper that all he wanted to do was confirm for the record that Cooper had been treated well since his arrest. It was hardly controversial.

Cooper said ‘No comment.’

And so it continued. More than 170 times Private Cooper responded to the questions put to him with ‘No comment.’

Sergeant Gordon’s perseverance was remarkable. He went through every aspect of the case in sequence, from the arrest of the detainees up to the moment of Baha Mousa’s death. Every so often he would turn to SSgt Sherrie Cooper and ask her ‘Anything up to now, Sherrie?’ There wasn’t. The only interruption to the monotonous flow was when they had to change tapes. And when Sergeant Gordon had an attack of cramp. They all laughed about that. Gordon had tried to avoid crying out in case it would be misinterpreted when heard on the tape. Police brutality. But eventually he had to explain. Flt Lt Hughes joked ‘Don’t die on us.’

Sergeant Gordon finally reached the end of his list of prepared questions. He had made not the slightest impact. By now it was becoming increasingly and uncomfortably cold in the room, freezing in fact. The air-conditioning unit was rudimentary, loud and a little too effective. It produced an atmosphere of icy unreality with the desert visible through the closed windows. Gordon felt an infuriating pressure. It all seemed so futile. Forty-five minutes of question after question with the same response time after time.

But Sergeant Gordon had one final query. Would Cooper be prepared to take part in an identity parade? He offered a long break for Cooper to think about it, to have a chat with his advisor.

The question may have seemed innocuous, but it was pregnant with implication. If there was to be an identity parade then it meant they had an eyewitness. Maybe more than one. Maybe someone who was in the detention block when Baha Mousa had died, someone who wasn’t supposed to say anything, perhaps.

Private Cooper and his legal advisor were given a private room. What could they have talked about? There was a man dead. Someone had to be responsible. Cooper had been identified as there at the death. How would that look? This was potential homicide, not some regulatory misdemeanour. It wasn’t even a matter of regimental discipline. It would involve a court martial, and then prison perhaps, and a long sentence if he was blamed and found guilty. He wouldn’t just be sacrificing his army career; this would be his whole life. A criminal record to take back to civvy street. And what would people see? Murder? War crime? Where would that leave him? If he had nothing to be guilty about, then staying silent wouldn’t necessarily help him. It might even drag him down. And if he was somehow responsible, even in part, then a lack of cooperation would hardly do him any credit.

Shortly after 3 pm everyone reconvened in the interview room. Cooper and his advisor had been talking for an hour.

Sergeant Gordon switched the tapes back on and asked Private Cooper whether anyone had applied any pressure on him during the break. It was a standard opening when there was a hint of confession in the air.

‘No,’ was Cooper’s reply.

And did he have anything to say now?

‘No … sorry, yes.’

OK.

‘I’m not going to ask you any questions,’ said Sergeant Gordon. He had spent long enough doing that already. ‘If you’ve got something to say, Private Cooper, the tape’s running.’

And Cooper launched into his story. ‘On the evening, I’m not sure of the day …’

Before he could get any further Gordon stopped him, apologised, turned off the air conditioning unit because it had become a ‘pain in the arse’ (it was still making too much noise and the little room was now ridiculously cold and Gordon could sense this was going to take some time) and then settled back to listen.

Cooper spoke in rapid, anxious, occasionally interrupted, snatched monologues.

‘On the evening, the Monday evening, I’m not sure of the date, I arrived to take over the rest of my call sign that was on duty guarding the detainees at 1QLR main. As I arrived at the, where the detainees were being held I heard … I heard someone asking for assistance. I looked in the room where six of the detainees were being held. I heard … there was no one there, no one asking for assistance, so I went on to another room just in between two of the main rooms and I seen an NCO with one of the detainees on the floor. He told me that the detainee had unhooded himself and taken off his plasticuffs … I was followed by another NCO with a torch to help with getting the plasticuffs back on as there was no electricity or lighting in the building, I uh …’

There was a pause, a quick breath. Cooper swallowed hard.

‘Take your time,’ Flt Lt Hughes said.

Cooper continued as breathlessly as before.

‘The NCO who asked me to assist him had himself positioned on top of the prisoner with one knee just below the shoulder blade … and then I got on the floor on my knees with one leg in between the legs of the prisoner … one of the detainee’s legs in between my legs on the floor and I went to put on the plasticuffs …’

‘Take your time, OK?’ said Flt Lt Hughes again.

Private Cooper stopped. He had a drink of water. But there was little change in his delivery.

‘We, the detainee, the prisoner, was struggling trying to get from … get away … get us not to touch him … he was struggling around. I tried to get the plasticuffs … I got the plasticuffs on to him but the detainee managed to get free once again. I’m not sure if he … if he forced them open himself or there was a problem with the plasticuffs. I seen the NCO stand up and as I also stood up … moved away from the prisoner and that … I seen the NCO kick, kick the prisoner twice in the right-hand side … from then I got the … we both got the, like, to the prisoner tried to restrain him again. He was still moving around trying to get away from us frantically and he hit his head, left-hand side of his head against a wall while trying to get away … while trying to struggle and after that I managed to … not long after that I managed to get the plasticuffs actually on to the prisoner and then we sat him upright against a wall. He flopped … he sort of fell over to the left-hand side so we put him on … we placed him on to the floor. I was asked then to check his pulse … I did check his pulse and he did have a pulse … another person … another soldier came into the room and checked him for breathing. I left the room and then I heard that the prisoner was not breathing …’

A short pause at last.

Sergeant Gordon asked ‘Is that all?’

It wasn’t.

‘I went to … after hearing that the prisoner had stopped breathing, I went into like a little corridor just outside of the middle room. I watched as the two lads tried to revive … get the detainee breathing again. The NCO who was involved was stood at the side of me. He went to go and get some more, to get, get more medical attention, stretcher and I held the torch while the lads tried to revive … to get him breathing again then as soon as medical attention, the stretcher arrived I moved out the way and let them carry on.’

Another pause.

And finally Cooper said ‘That’s it.’

This time he was sure. But, for the next hour or so, Sergeant Gordon picked away at the details of Private Cooper’s story. The first thing he wanted to know was why he had changed his mind about talking to them. What had happened between saying ‘No comment’ over 170 times and suddenly vomiting this confession?

‘If I didn’t speak out,’ Private Cooper said, ‘I could be blamed for the death of this man.’

It wasn’t the result of any influence applied to him?

‘No.’

Sergeant Gordon now wanted to know the identity of the other men in the small room of the detention block where Baha Mousa collapsed. Cooper told him that the NCO who had pinned Mousa to the floor was Corporal Donald Payne. The NCO who had followed Cooper into the room with the torch was LCpl Redfearn, who had only watched as Payne and Cooper restrained the prisoner. Private Reader was the soldier who had appeared a little later, who had checked the prisoner’s pulse and who had tried to resuscitate him.

How had the detainees been treated? Sergeant Gordon asked. Who had briefed the guards? What were they supposed to do? Private Cooper said he was told not to let the prisoners sleep. They were to be cuffed and hooded. Although he wasn’t at the detention facility all the time, when he was on duty, from late Monday night until early Tuesday, Sergeant Smith had come in, he said, and told him to uncuff the prisoners, take their hoods off and let them sleep. Then half an hour later, Cooper said, a colour sergeant, he thought Colour Sergeant Livesey, had entered the detention block and told them to put the cuffs and hoods back on and to get them all sitting up away from the wall. That was the way they kept them throughout the night. The guards would make a noise if the prisoners fell asleep. Cooper said they were given a metal bar to bang against the floor. But Cooper was adamant he didn’t punch or kick anyone.

At 5.17 pm the interview was brought to a close. Private Cooper assented to take part in an identification parade. He was then rearrested so that his boots could be removed. The SIB team wanted to test whether they matched any marks on the detainees. That done, he was sent back to his Company.

SSgt Sherrie Cooper then told LCpl Redfearn that he was to be treated only as a witness and he too was released back to his unit.