Iraq Historic Allegations Team

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Iraq Historic Allegations Team. An investigation team set up by the Coalition Government of David Cameron in the summer of 2010, in furtherance of an undertaking given by the predecessor government of Gordon Brown in March 2010. on 1 November 2010, Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey announced that it had begun its work. and that he anticipated it would complete its work in around 2 years. It's stated purpose is to investigate allegations of abuse of Iraqi citizens by British Service personnel. It is headed by Det Ch Supt Geoff White, a retired senior police officer with other members drawn from retired civilian policemen and serving member of the military.

Initial report of problems with the Inquiry

In June 2011 the BBC produced a report by Angus Crawford headlined "Iraq Historic Allegations team probe 'is a shambles'". It detailed complaints by Phil Shiner, lawyer for all the complainants, that the interview processes adopted by the inquiry team was a shambles.

Parliamentary announcement March 2012

On 26 March 2012 Nick Harvey MP, Minister of State for the Armed Forces, announced a 'reconfiguration' of IHAT in light of a Court of appeal judgement. The reconfiguration involved removing the Royal Military Police from IHAT and assigning its role to the Royal Navy Police. He also announced that two further investigations would be undertaken:

1. Baha Mousa - within the existing IHAT organisation, and
2. al-Skeini and others - by a separate team to be constituted to investigate further cases following a July 2011 European Court of Human Rights judgement in the case.

Inquiry whistleblower alleges 'Whitewash'

Louise Thomas, a 45 year old retired WREN, former police officer and official of the Inquiry, resigned in early October 2012 alleging that the Inquiry was shaping up to become "little more than a whitewash"

From the UK Guardian:

Thomas said she had seen around 1,600 videos of interrogation sessions, a number of which showed prisoners being abused, humiliated and threatened. They suggested that some of the detainees were being subject to extreme sleep deprivation and beaten between interrogation sessions. She alleges that the abuses recorded in the videos are being investigated in an ineffective manner, by investigators who sometimes show little concern for what they are seeing, and that not all relevant material has been handed over to the inquiry by the MoD.

"I saw a really dark side of the British army. The videos showed really quite terrible abuses. But some of the IHAT investigators just weren't interested."

See Also

• MOD's ‘Iraq Historic Allegations Team’ to face further legal challenge - Public Interest Lawyers web site December 2012
• File:MOD-Iraq-Historic-Allegations-Team.pdf - 26 March 2012 Parliamentary annonouncement about the reconstitution of IHAT in light of Court of Appeal judgement.