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ALTHOUGH PRIVATE SLICKER and others had been identified as ‘visiting’ the detention facility and MacKenzie, Aspinall and the others refuted any allegations of ill-treatment by them against the detainees, the men of Anzio Company were still the primary suspects for the assaults committed during arrest and detention. The SIB, therefore, had little choice but to interview the rest of the Company, particularly those in Lieutenant Rodgers’ multiple. They had to immerse themselves in the culture of the unit, to understand what had gone on and see who else may have been responsible for the violence. They couldn’t rely yet on the account that Corporal Payne was instigator and chief protagonist, dragooning or bullying others to take part in the ‘conditioning’. Nor could they reasonably believe that Payne had acted as an authority with no senior command approval, particularly as so many people had seen what was going on in the detention facility and done nothing to prevent it. The SIB had known much of this from the first days of the investigation. It was only now that its detectives moved into Battle Group Main to get some answers. They had to be quick. The whole of 1QLR was due to decamp to Britain by the end of October, having reached the end of their short but bloody tour of duty.

Over the following two weeks all the members of Anzio Company were interviewed.

The first to be seen was Lieutenant Rodgers. He was becoming a pivotal figure for the inquiry. Many of the A Company witnesses were saying that they were either ordered to treat the detainees as they did or followed the example of others. Most of the blame was being laid on Corporal Payne. Private Aspinall was suggesting the intelligence officer, Major Peebles, had some responsibility and MacKenzie mentioned CSgt Livesey as telling his ‘stag’ what to do. None mentioned their multiple commander, Lieutenant Rodgers. Was it plausible that his men had been directed to undertake guard duty at the detention facility without him having any sense of what they did there or the conditions they were supposed to maintain?

Lieutenant Rodgers’ position was plain from the moment his interview began: he claimed he had nothing to do with the detention facility. As far as he was concerned this was the preserve of the provost staff, Sergeant Smith and Corporal Payne in particular. He was a line officer, no more, in charge of a platoon out in the field, patrolling, rapid response, armed operations. The army had its firmly defined chains of command and it wasn’t for him to interfere in other people’s duties. That would go against the whole structure of discipline which governed troops on active service or, for that matter, back home in barracks. Other officers were supposed to shoulder the tasks of looking after prisoners, questioning them, moving them on to other installations. He and his men were often required to help out, to provide guards and transport for Iraqis taken prisoner during his operations. But the care and treatment of detainees had nothing to do with him. The job was difficult and intense enough as it was. Naturally, his men had to pull guard duty from time to time. That was to be expected. He handed over his men to the provost staff to tell them what to do. It was like a loan. He would facilitate that but little else as far as he was concerned. His knowledge of tactical questioning or conditioning or any other of those ‘intelligence’ related issues was extremely limited, he told the SIB interviewer.

What about Operation Salerno? Was that different?

Well, yes, Rodgers said. He’d visited the detention facility when those prisoners lifted from the Hotel al-Haitham were held there, but only to oversee the handover between stags of his men. During one of these visits he’d noticed a detainee having ‘breathing difficulties’ and he spoke to him through Private Hunt, who apparently knew some Arabic. The prisoner said he wanted to see his father who was in the next room of the building, he was worried about him. Lieutenant Rodgers arranged for the old man to be brought to the entrance of the room so that the son could see he was OK. Apart from that Rodgers saw nothing to concern him. The place stank of body odour and it was very hot. Hardly surprising that. But he didn’t see anything unduly bad about the place, certainly no violence. He knew the prisoners were to be kept awake prior to questioning and that they were being held in stress positions and had to wear hoods most of the time. There wasn’t anything wrong with that, was there? It was all part of the softening-up prior to questioning. And it wasn’t his affair in any case.

Did he know anything about the death of Baha Mousa?

Rodgers said he’d been at Battle Group Main that night, sitting with Major Peebles, the intelligence officer, for about thirty minutes receiving a briefing on another operation, when Corporal Payne had suddenly knocked on the door. He was visibly breathless and sweaty and told them that there was a problem with one of the prisoners. Major Peebles asked to be kept informed and Payne left, only to return within a few minutes to report that the prisoner was dead. Rodgers hurried to the ops room to make sure that a message about the death was sent through to Lt Col Mendonça. Major Peebles put on his combat shirt and supposedly headed off to the detention facility.

Once he had ensured the CO was informed, Rodgers decided to see what had happened with the prisoners. His men were there, after all. He walked over to the detention facility and quickly cornered Private Aspinall, who told him one of the prisoners had banged his head on a wall. There was some ‘heated’ discussion, Rodgers said, as he tried to get to the bottom of what had gone on. He was particularly concerned about why the man who had died had been kept in the latrine room. He didn’t reveal why that troubled him so much.

Lieutenant Rodgers said the CO then arrived to say there would be an SIB investigation. A Company’s officer in command, Major Englefield, also turned up. It was chaos. No one appeared able to say how the man had died or who was involved or provide any detail of significance at all. They were in the dark metaphorically and literally (there were only torches and distant street lights to illuminate the building).

Still in a state of ignorance, Rodgers organised his multiple. There were detainees to look after and he assigned a few of his men to continue with the guard duty. The rest he allowed to wander back to their Bedford trucks parked about Battle Group Main, to sleep where they could. In the morning, Rodgers and his men transported the remaining detainees to Camp Bucca. Interestingly, no mention was made then of what happened there, the uproar when the injuries to the prisoners were noticed or the direct accusations made against him by the reservist intelligence officer, Lt Cdr Crabbe.

That was all Lieutenant Rodgers had to say. Except for one final point, almost as an aside, but quietly tantalising nonetheless. He recalled that a few days after the death and the ensuing upheaval, probably on 6 or 7 October, he and his multiple were called to assist their sister Company, Burma, to help quell a riot that had threatened to break out in town. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence and indeed the Burma Company sergeant major, Darren Leigh, was spectacularly familiar with such hazards. In August 2003, he and his company had been confronted by a large, hostile crowd, which outnumbered his men by ten to one. The situation had been on the cusp of becoming deadly. There had been rifle shots from the crowd, stones thrown, a couple of grenades. The 300 or so Iraqis had become emboldened with each act of violence directed at the small contingent of British troops. But CSM Leigh had refused to withdraw. Ignoring wounds to his legs caused by one of the exploding grenades, he had led his multiple in a baton charge which unnerved the mob and made them scatter. Afterwards, word had travelled around 1QLR and Leigh was seen as something of a hero. His commanding officer had recommended him for a decoration.

The situation wasn’t quite so dramatic when Lieutenant Rodgers and his multiple had turned up to support Burma Company. Between the two companies they had managed to quell any outrage and disperse the crowd without too much difficulty. Afterwards, Rodgers said he stood chatting with CSM Leigh about the disturbance when quite without warning Leigh interjected to say the men of A Company were ‘trying to fit up Don Payne’. Rodgers hadn’t known what he was talking about and denied the suggestion, he said. Leigh allegedly retorted with a warning: if they say anything, then ‘they’ll get their comeuppance’.

Rodgers claimed he’d walked away at that point telling the man to ‘grow up’. He’d later told his commanding officer, Major Englefield, about the comments, but despite otherwise keeping the matter to himself he soon realised, he said, that Leigh’s remarks had reached his soldiers. They had become scared, he said.

If that was really true, why then had Aspinall, MacKenzie, Cooper and Graham all come forward within a day of the supposed exchange between Rodgers and Leigh? They can’t have been that scared. The story suggested that either the men in A Company were lying about Payne, thus perpetrating a gross injustice and perhaps protecting someone else, or Leigh was trying somehow to shield Payne. It was a conundrum worth investigating.

CSM Leigh was asked about the alleged conversation, and the threat harboured within it, but not until February 2004 when he was stationed with the rest of 1QLR in Cyprus. His account was entirely different. Unsurprisingly, he denied any warning regarding Corporal Payne. He’d only made a sick joke as far as he remembered. ‘I wonder who your multiple is going to kill today,’ he’d said to Lieutenant Rodgers standing next to his Land Rover. Everyone had laughed. It was ‘light-hearted’ and ‘friendly’, the kind of banter that passed as humour amongst soldiers.

Why would Lieutenant Rodgers twist this conversation to suggest something more sinister? What purpose did it serve? And if Leigh was the one who was lying, what was hidden behind his threat?

The opportunity to look deeper into the conversation was lost a couple of months later. One Thursday in late April 2004, CSM Leigh was told that he’d been awarded a Military Cross for his actions in the riot in Basra the previous August. On the Friday, the decoration was made public. On the Saturday, he was dead. He had suffered a massive brain haemorrhage. It was his thirty-seventh birthday.