Part 4

EPILOGUE

 

ALITTLE OVER A Year after the disastrous, often farcical, court martial, Des Browne, then Secretary of State for Defence, told Parliament that a public inquiry would be held into the death of Baha Mousa. Browne’s decision wasn’t an act of grace. In 2007, the House of Lords had handed down a judgment that the Human Rights Act should apply to the death in custody of Baha Mousa and the government was obliged to undertake a proper inquiry into the matter. The court martial and preceding Royal Military Police investigation were deemed insufficient.

In making his announcement on 14 May 2008, Browne spoke of his determination to do everything he could ‘to understand how it came to be that Mr Mousa lost his life’. The army, he said, had ‘no wish to hide anything’. It had already looked critically at itself. And it had made changes. Brigadier Aitken had produced a report as instructed by General Sir Michael Jackson following the Camp Breadbasket trial fiasco in February 2005. It had taken the brigadier nearly three years to produce his thirty-six-page review. He felt confident that only a ‘tiny’ number of allegations were credible. He warned that ‘it would be a mistake to make radical changes … unless there was clear evidence that the faults we were seeking to rectify were endemic’. According to him, they were not.

The full public inquiry called by the Defence Secretary would have to look again. On Monday 13 July 2009 Sir William Gage took his seat as chair of the Baha Mousa Inquiry in London and called upon Gerard Elias QC, counsel to the inquiry, to present his opening address. Three topics concerned him: how Baha Mousa died; the nature of training and command; and what lessons could be learnt from the whole affair. That was the territory he could cover. He wasn’t allowed to consider the investigation and its quality. He wasn’t allowed to consider the court martial and its failings.

Still, over the succeeding months, all those witnesses in the court martial and many more besides were called to take an oath and answer questions. There was again a bevy of barristers representing everyone from the Ministry of Defence, the army, the individual soldiers and the detainees, to test the evidence. But none of the lawyers would be allowed the licence to cross-examine with the ruthlessness that the court martial QCs had displayed. Public inquiries may be intrusive but they aren’t trials. Their purpose is to find out the truth, not to prove a charge or ‘break’ a witness.

After more than two years of scrutiny, hundreds of witnesses called, all at a cost in excess of £12 million, the Gage Report was delivered in September 2011.