25

DAOUD MOUSA WAITED for news about the release of his son’s body. The family needed to mourn Baha’s death properly and to complete the funeral rituals. He had been told that this would only be possible once the post-mortem had been completed. There was a delay because a specialist was being flown in from the UK. On 20 September an SIB-appointed interpreter telephoned Mr Mousa. He was told that the autopsy would occur early the following day and once that was over he could make arrangements for the body to be collected. And yes, an Iraqi doctor would also be present, an independent witness to the procedure. Daoud Mousa, of course, was welcome to attend, at least to meet and speak with the British pathologist. He and his family prepared themselves.

At dawn the next day, Daoud Mousa and Baha’s surviving brother, Ala, travelled to Shaibah base. They had told other members of the family what was happening and they too made the journey to wait outside the gates. Everyone wanted to know what the outcome of the post-mortem would be. They wanted to know how Baha had died.

Daoud and his remaining son were allowed into the base whilst everyone else was kept outside. The two of them were shown into a room where they were introduced to Dr Ian Hill and an Iraqi doctor. They spoke for a few minutes about Baha’s condition before his arrest and then the medics left to prepare for the autopsy.

Hours passed. A crowd of about thirty or forty family and friends of Baha had by now congregated about the base’s entrance. They were chanting and waving flags, ‘causing an obstruction’, the SIB log recorded. SSgt Cooper collected Daoud Mousa and took him down to the gate. She wanted to quiet the crowd, to defuse the tension, avoid any possibility of confrontation. That would interfere with everything the SIB was trying to do. She explained to the gathered crowd that autopsies took time, the pathologist had to be meticulous and they had to be patient. Mr Mousa would be allowed to see the doctors afterwards and they would learn about the findings as soon as they were available. It was a promise that assuaged any growing ill feeling and the crowd began to dissolve, people drifting away. Daoud Mousa waited.

Finally, Dr Hill emerged from the tent, quickly scrubbed down and after a pause of several minutes sat with Daoud Mousa and Ala. It was not an easy discussion. With staff sergeants Sherrie Cooper and Daren Jay and Captain Nugent present as well, Dr Hill was brutally frank about his discoveries. He said that Baha had died of ligature strangulation. Everyone heard the words. Everyone guessed what it meant. Strangulation was a murderous term not indicative of accident. It was direct and cruel, and it was also clear.

The Iraqi doctor had already spoken to Daoud about the other injuries, the broken ribs and the bruises. This last piece of medical information emphasised the scale of violence that was done to his son. It shook Daoud. To hear the details that could fuel the imaginings of suffering was a little too much. He became distraught. He demanded an official apology, compensation. How would the family cope without Baha, how would Baha’s sons cope?

Members of the RMP talked to him, asked for permission to take samples, which he gave, outlined how the investigation was to proceed, tried to calm the rage. Only after some time could the SIB officers end the meeting and escort Mousa off the base. SSgt Cooper accompanied him to the gates and told him to come back the following day so that he could collect his son’s body and receive the death certificate. It was a tawdry, unceremonious moment.

On the following day, 22 September, a full week after Baha Mousa had been killed, Daoud returned to Shaibah base with a car and a coffin and a local TV crew. He didn’t believe that his son’s death should go unnoticed. If he could publicise what had happened to his son then maybe some justice could be done.

SSgt Cooper met Mousa at the gates again. She put conditions on his entry: car, coffin, OK; TV crew, no. He didn’t object. Cooper took him to the mortuary where Baha was lying in a military coffin. Daoud Mousa was asked to confirm his son’s identity for one final time and then the body was lifted out and placed into the family’s coffin. It was at this point that the mortuary attendant, Corporal Edwards, handed over the death certificate that had been prepared.

The certificate was rudely filled out by hand in English. It was entitled ‘Death Certificate – International’ and it was a one-page form to be filled in. Some of the sections showed that the certificate was intended for UK forces personnel serving overseas, as they referred to ‘Rank/Rating’ and ‘Regt or Corps/RAF Command’ and to ‘Ship/Unit/RAF station’. Nonetheless, the majority of the short document could apply to anyone. The main section dealt with the ‘Cause of Death’ and provided a sequence of seven boxes to be completed. They referred to the ‘disease or condition directly leading to death’ and any ‘antecedent causes’, ‘morbid conditions’ and ‘other significant conditions contributing to the death’. The form handed to Daoud Mousa included only brief entries. Even the most rudimentary knowledge of English would have shown that only two words were recorded for the cause of death.

Rather than take receipt, however, Mousa asked for these words to be translated there and then. He wouldn’t be satisfied until that was done. Perhaps the brevity of entries on the form induced some prescient concern. Whatever the reason, an interpreter was called and began to translate the form. Things went awry immediately. Baha’s name was incorrect. The surname was recorded as ‘Dawood’ instead of ‘Mousa’. Then the interpreter translated the disease or condition directly leading to death. ‘Cardiorespiratory arrest’, it said – heart failure, in other words. And underneath, where the box required an entry noting how that condition had come about, there was hastily written ‘Unknown – refer to coroner.’

Heart failure? Unknown causes?

Daoud Mousa was enraged. He’d sat in a room the day before, enduring the torture of the British pathologist describing a litany of injury inflicted upon his son, concluding that death had been the result of asphyxiation, clearly saying the way in which this might have happened. Now here was a form saying that heart failure due to ‘unknown’ factors was being registered as the cause of death.

Moments of deep confusion followed. The mortuary attendant couldn’t do anything about the form and nor could SSgt Cooper. It was suggested that Corporal Edwards should see if he could get the form changed. It had been signed by Captain Andrew Le Feuvre, the senior house officer in the A & E department of Shaibah hospital, and Edwards went to find him. He returned several minutes later with a new certificate. The name had been changed to record Baha Mousa’s proper appellation, but the captain had refused to alter anything else on the form. The entries describing the cause of death and how it came about were left untouched.

SSgt Cooper could sense the situation swerving out of her control. She knew Daoud Mousa was right about the pathologist’s findings. She had been in the room at the time when Dr Hill had so bluntly relayed his opinion. There was no doubting that the form was wrong. It gave a completely false description. She had heard the term ‘asphyxia’ used and she couldn’t deny that now. Nor did she want to. But if the senior medical officer was not prepared to change the form, who else would do so? Dr Hill had already left the country.

Daoud Mousa was becoming frantic. The tension in the room threatened to spill over to the crowd outside. Then the hospital sergeant major, Warrant Officer Pooley, stepped in. He was insistent that these Iraqi civilians, Daoud Mousa and his son and their car and their body, had to leave the base immediately. He was worried that matters would escalate and the excitable crowd at the gates would erupt. No one felt easy when a mob could form at any moment and incite a sudden upsurge in violence.

With an eye to the dangers as well as the justice in Daoud Mousa’s outrage, SSgt Sherrie Cooper decided to ignore the protocol of army authority and grabbed the certificate from Corporal Edwards. She took a pen and added the word ‘Asphyxia’ after ‘cardiorespiratory arrest’, signed the amendment and handed the form back to Daoud Mousa. It was sufficient to resolve the burgeoning crisis. Mousa accepted the amended form and drove away with the body of his son, leaving SSgt Cooper to confess what she had done to Captain Nugent and record her actions in the case file. Except that the file entry wasn’t entirely accurate. It said:

Death certificate handed to father however after translating it he was unhappy with it as the name of the deceased was incorrect name should be Baha Dawood Salim Musa, he was unhappy with cause of death as it said cardiorespiratory arrest – refer to coroner. Death certificate changed except cause of death. This was explained to the father who eventually accepted it.

The reticence to record what had actually happened was understandable. But why the death certificate had made no reference to Dr Hill’s findings in the first place was never satisfactorily explained. Years later, Dr Andrew Le Feuvre would say that he couldn’t remember anything about the document and couldn’t even understand why he would have signed it at all. Normally he would only have done so if he had been the deceased’s usual doctor or perhaps had been present at the person’s death. He had been neither. His hospital records, however, indicated that he’d received a call from Dr Keilloh of Battle Group Main on the night Baha Mousa had died. At 11.54 pm, and nearly two hours after Mousa had been pronounced dead, Dr Le Feuvre had spoken with Dr Keilloh who had informed him about the death. The note he’d taken echoed Keilloh’s own initial belief that the deceased had died of a heart attack. But it had also recorded that a post-mortem might be required. Dr Le Feuvre surmised that he’d been asked to write the death certificate at that point and therefore the only cause of death he could have inserted would have been Dr Keilloh’s diagnosis.

Even with such a possible explanation, grounded not in memory (which wholly eluded Dr Le Feuvre), but in conjecture, this was an odd thing to do. To complete a death certificate without even seeing a body was highly irregular irrespective of whether or not Le Feuvre was under pressure at the A & E unit of Shaibah field hospital at the time. Regard for proper procedure was not that lax, as demonstrated by his refusal to amend the certificate (apart from the name) when requested to do so by Corporal Edwards. It was a material issue, however. It could make the difference between Baha Mousa’s death being treated as manslaughter rather than murder.