26

AFTER DIFFUSING THE tension at Shaibah hospital, SSgt Cooper had herself escorted to Battle Group Main along with one of her RMP colleagues, Sergeant Stanford. She had an appointment with Lt Col Mendonça whilst Stanford was to undertake the overdue crime scene examination at the detention block. Sergeant Stanford took a video of the now empty rooms and collected several sandbags, one of which appeared to be splattered with blood.

SSgt Cooper’s task was to brief the CO of 1QLR and update him on all recent developments in the investigation. They sat in his office as she relayed the increasingly perilous information. Perilous, that was, for the regiment’s and Mendonça’s reputations. Following the post-mortem, she told him, it was clear that whatever the death certificate had recorded initially, the cause of death was not natural. That meant that they had to contemplate a range of possible offences: murder, manslaughter, assault, ill-treatment, abuse and possibly neglect. The surviving detainees were now being interviewed systematically and their statements were being taken. She handed him the arrest records for Private Cooper and LCpl Redfearn and explained that for the moment these men were not to be charged. But with the information they had, she said, the SIB squad would now need to move on to the battalion, interview all members of Anzio Company, all troops responsible for guarding the detainees, anyone who they thought might be able to reveal the circumstances of the death and the way in which the group of detainees had been picked up and handled. She also told him that the family were demanding an apology and compensation. Neither of these was a matter for the SIB. Both were Battalion’s and therefore Mendonça’s responsibility, at least to begin with. Her recommendation, though, was to get advice from Brigade before he did anything.

Later, SSgt Cooper would describe Mendonça as ‘devastated’ by all the news she had delivered. She would say he told her he was worried that all the good work that 1QLR had completed in Basra would now be forgotten, overshadowed. The case log also recorded that he was ‘fairly angry with his regiment’ and that he offered whatever assistance he could to the investigation. SSgt Cooper asked for more armed escorts. Without personnel in accompanying vehicles the RMP couldn’t operate speedily, she told him. The new regulations that required all vehicles to move in pairs for their own security were preventing the investigators getting to the locations around Basra so as to finish their inquiries. Lt Col Mendonça agreed to help.

With the unpleasant briefing over, Cooper returned to the investigation. She made use of her time at Battle Group Main by re-interviewing some of the medics who had treated Baha Mousa on the night of his death. She had already questioned them on the 17th and had taken short statements then on the details of their treatment of the dead man. This time she wanted to know whether they may have noticed or treated injuries to other detainees. She went over to the Regimental Aid Post and spoke to the three medics there. By some weird coincidence two of them had precisely the same name, Steven Winstanley, although one was a corporal and the other a private. The third medic was Corporal Baxter.

Private Winstanley told SSgt Cooper that he, his namesake and Baxter had been assigned to examine the detainees on the day of their arrest, 14 September. He’d visited the detention facility at about 3 pm under the supervision of his two colleagues and had seen eight prisoners, standing up, hands cuffed together, arms lifted up and out towards the front at shoulder height, their heads covered with sandbags. A brief check of each man had been conducted, the sandbags lifted so that their faces and necks could be inspected, shirts too to see their torsos. The medic hadn’t seen any injury or physical problem at all, they had all appeared fine to him. He hadn’t bothered to fill in any form, he said. There was no need, nothing to record.

Cooper returned to HQ, her case hardly advanced by seeing the medical team.