36

7.30 PM, 9 October 2003. Just as privates Slicker and Bentham were being processed by the SIB for transport to Britain and interview under caution, WO Spence received a phone call. Captain Mark Moutarde, the 1QLR adjutant, had rung to say that a number of men in Anzio Company wanted to speak to the investigators about the death of Baha Mousa.

It was no coincidence. The arrest of Pete Bentham had ignited a reaction in his comrades. But whether it was fear that they would be next or outrage that Bentham had been arrested wasn’t yet clear. Had they been ordered to come forward or was it voluntary? Was it an attempt by 1QLR, and Anzio Company in particular, to take some control of a steadily deteriorating situation?

The whispers had already started before Bentham had been plucked from their sides. Corporal Payne had been spirited away as if merging into the early-morning desert miasma of heat shivers on tarmac. His presence was easily missed. That physicality and shockwave voice, the kind that make people wince and turn away, cross the road, anything to avoid contact, had seemed ever present at Battle Group Main: in the canteen, hanging about the accommodation block, in the quartermaster’s stores, wandering the little world of the Battle Group Main compound. One couldn’t fail but realise he had gone. It may have been a relief, but it was also a worry.

The rumours fanning out after his disappearance made people nervous. Conversations in quarters, a few words here and there; people must have known something was going on. The Anzio Company crew must have been drawing conclusions. And the officers couldn’t have been immune from these developing feelings of dread either. Did they just sit back and wait? Or did they intervene in some way?

The men whose names Captain Moutarde put forward were Private Aaron Cooper, who had already given a statement when arrested the week before and was in the SIB’s sights, Private Stuart MacKenzie, Bentham’s friend in the Company, and Private Gareth Aspinall, who also worked closely with Bentham. They were anxious, and with good reason. All had taken part in the Hotel al-Haitham operation and all had been in the detention centre guarding the arrested Iraqis before Baha Mousa’s death. If Bentham could be arrested for murder, as they supposed, and airlifted back home in a matter of moments, or so it seemed, they might be next. Was this their motivation for agreeing to talk?

Before any interviews could be arranged, Captain Moutarde rang again to say that he had another willing witness. Private Lee Graham, who at eighteen was one of the youngest in the battalion, had also come forward. The SIB picked up all four men and drove them to Shaibah Headquarters.

The first thing the investigators wanted to know was why the men had suddenly changed their story. SSgt Sherrie Cooper had seen them the day before, on 8 October, and all had denied witnessing any violence inflicted on the detainees by anyone. They had been close-lipped. What had changed? Only Gareth Aspinall offered an explanation. He’d been ‘very scared’, of one person in particular, he said. Now Corporal Payne was out of the way, he’d decided to tell the truth.

The justification didn’t make much sense. Corporal Payne had been lifted on 1 October. Bentham had been arrested on the 7th. Aspinall and the other three had first been spoken to by SSgt Cooper on the 8th and had refused to say anything then about what had happened. Now, the next day, they had changed their minds. Simultaneously. The investigators were just pleased to break through the unit’s silence so they didn’t press for a more plausible explanation.

The story told by all four was pretty consistent. There was one common theme: it was all or mostly Corporal Payne’s fault. He was the aggressor, the man who orchestrated the violence against the detainees. Everyone in Anzio Company was scared of him and couldn’t bring themselves to say anything about the violence, couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything to stop it, to the point where they would even go along with the brutality, at least passively or with only mild involvement, so as not to provoke Payne or openly challenge him. They didn’t seem embarrassed by their lack of courage.

The more the soldiers spoke the more they revealed about Payne’s brutality and the involvement of a few others from outside their Company. Ripples of accusations against members of 1QLR appeared in their accounts. CSgt Robert Livesey’s name came up. He was part of the intelligence cell in 1QLR and worked with the interrogators under the command of Major Peebles, the officer in charge of processing the detainees. On the first night after the arrest, during MacKenzie’s ‘stag’ with Aaron Cooper, Sergeant Smith, who was Payne’s immediate superior, had come into the facility and ordered them to let the detainees relax. Smith had told them they could take off the hoods and plasticuffs, give the prisoners water and let them sleep. About half an hour later, CSgt Livesey had come into the detention facility and seen the prisoners sleeping, without cuffs or hoods. He’d been angry and aggressive, MacKenzie said. Livesey ordered the guard to wake the detainees up, to take the water away, put the cuffs and hoods back on and get them standing. Then he’d gone again.

Private Lee Graham identified another visitor. In fact there had been ‘a stream of unit personnel’ wandering randomly into the detention block. Staff Sergeant Christopher Roberts, a senior member of H Company, was one of them. Graham described how Roberts had entered the building, aimed forceful kicks at three of the prisoners, who had cried out in pain, and then left. There had been no reason for the kicking, Graham said. He also remembered the doctor from the medical centre had come over to look at the old man and another prisoner who was complaining of shortness of breath.

Gareth Aspinall said that he’d seen a major, the interrogation officer (who must have been Major Peebles, although his name wasn’t mentioned), come into the building and pick out a detainee for escorting back to questioning. It was this major who had also told them to segregate Baha Mousa and put him in the latrine. Baha was being such a nuisance by lifting his hood and somehow getting out of his cuffs, a story which supported Payne’s account.

There were some admissions by the witnesses about their own behaviour, but they were couched in carefully guarded language. Graham confessed to ‘slapping’ the prisoners, but only as part of the shock culture preparing for interrogation. He said he, Bentham and Aspinall had all gently slapped the prisoners across the head occasionally. It was only intended to shock them into keeping in the stress positions. There was no intent to hurt them or cause them pain. Aspinall too said he slapped the detainees a couple of times around the face, but he was following his superiors’ lead and thought it was just an ‘insult’ to Iraqis. He admitted that he’d struck a metal bar against the floor to keep the prisoners awake following the example of Payne and ‘the major’. All four soldiers mentioned they had seen the ‘choir’ as well. It appeared to have been thought up and executed by Payne alone. It was his joke, they said. Aspinall found it funny to start with but towards the end of the second day he thought the prisoners had been through enough. Not that he did anything to stop it. He tried to spend as much time as possible outside with his book, he said.

It was Payne, then, who was labelled the chief and enduring culprit. He was the one who had instigated the ‘choir’ and who had enjoyed showing visitors how funny it was. He was the one who had kicked the prisoners with undiminished vigour. He was the one who had targeted ‘Fatboy’ (Baha Mousa) and ‘Grandad’ for particularly vicious treatment.

And there was another common thread. MacKenzie and Aspinall both claimed that Private Peter Bentham couldn’t have had anything to do with the death. MacKenzie said that he’d returned to Battle Group Main from patrol at about 9.30 pm on 15 September and entered the detention facility to relieve privates Bentham, Aspinall and Graham on guard duty. MacKenzie saw the prisoners still in a bit of a state, slumped on the floor. He saw Corporal Payne in one of the main rooms and heard him shout his usual invective, ‘Get your fucking heads up’, punch a detainee about five times hard in the head, before seeing him walk into the middle room. MacKenzie said he went outside before returning and looking into the middle room, the former latrine. Private Bentham and LCpl Redfearn were shining torches into the room where Corporal Payne stood before a prisoner. MacKenzie saw Payne punch the prisoner in the stomach; he stumbled back against a wall. Payne grabbed the man by the top of his head and about the scruff of his neck and threw him to the floor. The prisoner hit the floor, face down. Payne stood over him with his arms pressed against either wall as though stabilising himself and began to kick the prisoner very hard. He used his right foot and kicked out six or seven times, MacKenzie said, striking the man about the head and shoulders. Payne was ‘going berserk’. MacKenzie left the room only to return a few seconds later to see the prisoner lying motionless on the floor, Payne trying to pull him up and failing. The prisoner had gone limp, lifeless. Then everything went fucking mad, people shouting for a stretcher, for the medics.

A slightly different absolution was offered by Private Graham. He said that at 9 pm on the day of Baha Mousa’s death, he was relieved of guard duty at the facility and jumped into the rear of a Saxon vehicle waiting to be taken back to barracks. Private Bentham sat in the back with him, which if correct, would mean he wasn’t in the detention facility at all when Baha Mousa died. It took him away from the scene altogether.

Aspinall was in the detention facility then and he didn’t mention Bentham. All he said was that he’d been waiting in the Saxon sometime after 9 pm when he’d heard lots of shouting and calls for a medic. He’d jumped out of the vehicle and tried to look inside the building to see what was going on. But it was too dark. Pitch black. Then the stretcher had appeared and ‘Fatboy’ was carried away. The damning part of his statement, though, was directed at Payne. Aspinall said he’d been in a ‘huddle’ with his mates outside the detention block after Baha Mousa had been stretchered away when Payne had appeared. He’d said to them all, ‘If anyone asks, we were trying to put plasticuffs on and he banged his head’ or something along those lines.

Aspinall took this to mean that he and the others were to keep to the script if asked any questions, which, of course, they had done for some time. Until now.