Baha Mousa’s death was re-investigated during a 2011 public inquiry in Britain but this has not stopped the widespread practice of torture and inhumane interrogations of suspects Iraqi hotel receptionist, Baha Mousa, sustained more than 93 injuries and died while in British army custody in Basra in September 2003. In the 36 hours he was in army custody, Mousa was found to have been hooded, cuffed, beaten and kicked before he died of heart failure and asphyxiation.

Mousa was 26 years old and bringing up his two young sons after his wife’s death from cancer. His family were Shia and because thousands of Shias had been killed under Saddam Hussein’s regime they supported the British and American forces that ousted him and unravelled the regime-supported Ba’ath party. Mousa wasn’t politically motivated to join an insurgent faction: he couldn’t afford the transgression. Financially supporting his two nephews as well, he held two jobs — operating a car sales business during the day and working as a receptionist at the Hotel Haitham in Basra at night. His brother had died after a failed medical operation and his father, a former Iraqi police colonel, worked in the customs department. Mousa was detained, along with nine other people, following a raid on the hotel where he worked and where weapons were discovered.

Investigating the crime and its aftermath in detail, including the findings of a public inquiry in September 2011, A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa by Andrew Williams examines the events leading to Mousa’s death. Williams questions why the investigation was riddled with institutional apathy and bureaucratic delays followed by a flawed military inquiry at the time. This isn’t just about what happened to Mousa but about moral failings, institutional brutality and indifference, and neglect of official duty. Earlier this year, Williams’ chilling study won him the Orwell book prize for political writing for an account that is both gripping and terribly disturbing, despite the clear and detached forensic detailing; this could perhaps be one of the most meticulous studies of the Iraq war. With thorough, fast-paced documentation using thousands of pages of testimony, media reports, transcripts and public enquiry findings, A Very British Killing attempts to get to the truth and pose difficult questions — the answers to which are cleverly inserted into the narrative. Williams, who is a law professor, acknowledges the commitment of human rights lawyer Phil Shiner, who fought for compensation for Mousa’s family.

In 2008, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) agreed to pay £2.83 million as compensation to Mousa’s family after the findings of a year-long inquiry critiqued those responsible for Mousa’s death, acknowledging that what happened was “deplorable, shocking and shameful”. The report talked of the ill-treatment of nine other detainees captured with Mousa and of the lack of moral courage on the part of witnesses to report the abuse. A public inquiry in London that began in July 2009 revealed two years later that hooding and stress positions on suspected Iraqi insurgents had become the standard operating procedure practiced by military personnel. To date, an Iraq Historic Allegations Team brought together by the MoD to investigate ill-treatment has paid out millions of pounds in compensation to more than one hundred victims of abuse. In December 2012, a former British army doctor was found guilty of attempting to cover up Mousa’s death and of failing to protect the nine other detainees. They survived their ordeal at Camp Bucca, a US army base near Umm Qasr on the Persian Gulf. It was known to operate as the coalition forces’ Theatre Internment Facility, holding and interrogating thousands of Iraqis during the war, people suspected of allegiances to the Ba’ath party, insurgent groups and those thought to perpetuate street terror.

The 28-year-old captain and senior medic in the British Army in charge of detainees was said to be aware of Mousa’s injuries but failed to examine him adequately. According to the British pathologist Dr Hill — who had been flown into Basra to conduct an autopsy almost immediately after Mousa’s death — Mousa had 93 injuries. Among them, Dr Hill noted a broken nose, a swollen brain, four broken ribs and internal bruising. The accused army doctor attending to the detainees had failed to assess the condition of the detainees as it worsened and protect them from torture. They were subjected to hooding with sandbags for 24 hours, stress positions, beaten with iron rods, kicked and denied food and water.

Williams’ account is obviously not without pain. Mousa’s last words, “Who will care for my children now,” speak volumes about the nature of war and the pursuit of justice. His father, Daoud, was assured that his son would be sent home the same day he was arrested; instead Mousa was hooded with sandbags, his body left in a dirty, small toilet with bruises the size of golf balls. Witnesses, many who took pleasure in beating and humiliating the detainees in the dirty building where they were held in temperatures of up to 50 degrees, watched them suffer, and some, including military personnel officers, the padre and a duty doctor never thought to stop or report the abuse. Williams writes that they were either too scared to intervene or too desperate to get out of Iraq. He exposes the breaches of the Geneva Convention when it came to hooding and beating alleged suspects — similar incidents of torture and interrogation methods have been reported in Afghanistan — despite guidelines to the contrary.

The public inquiry into Mousa’s death also questioned why interrogation methods banned in Britain for 30 years were used during the Iraq campaign. In 1972, hooding, white noise, sleep deprivation, food deprivation and stress positions (known as the “five techniques”) were banned by the British government. However, there is acknowledgement that when it came to the Iraq war (and to Afghanistan), not only were there no guidelines set by the MoD on interrogation methods, the training of interrogators was also an issue (“practices condemned by the ICRC weren’t the product of ‘bad apples’. They were institutionalised, part of army teaching,” writes Williams) and detainees were subject to serious assaults by junior officers without any action being taken. Williams explains this was because “the army were more than familiar with such behaviour from its troops ever since the invasion.” The political advisor of the commander of British armed forces in Iraq was told by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that “methods of ill-treatment used by military intelligence personnel to interrogate persons deprived of their liberty” could become a political disaster if brought to light.

Mousa’s death, primarily because of hooding, reveals that systemic abuse of Iraqi civilians was not unheard of. Lack of protections for prisoners meant guidelines were given again in April 2003 (before Mousa died) about the treatment of detainees, along with caution that accusations of torture wouldn’t look good given the opposition to the Iraq war in Britain. The ICRC and the international media had caught onto the ill-treatment of detainees and commanders in Iraq were warned against using such methods.

The question asked was how does interrogation turn violent? Williams maintains that the British military knew about these concerns before and after Mousa’s tragic death and that of other detainees. He questions why incidents of torture and violent methods used, although politically and morally damaging, were not given attention. Were new units sent to the theatre of war briefed regarding these practices? The problem was that young men were not trained or even willing at times to fight an urban insurgency where enemy and ally were difficult to distinguish. Counterinsurgency strategies meant working with communities known to have shielded militants.

A statement made in 2006 describes an Iraqi man’s treatment by the British forces in Basra: “He was interrogated aggressively, struck with a stick and threatened with Guantánamo. In between sessions he was forced into a stress position in the cold for 30 hours and stoned and beaten. He was twice taken to medics, but not to the toilet, so he urinated on himself … [On arrival at a second detention facility] he was goggled and earmuffed, forced to undress in public and examined by a medic while naked. A female saw him nude. He spent 36 days in solitary confinement in a tiny freezing cell with restricted bedding, food and water. Soldiers beat him, prevented him sleeping by banging his door and shouting insults...”

No one was held guilty for Mousa’s death despite the serious discipline breach by the soldiers. The chain of military command continues to allow for this system of torture to remain institutionalised and to endorse the ill-treatment of suspects as part of the humiliation deemed necessary to subjugate, interrogate and gather information on insurgent activity.

The reviewer is senior assistant editor at the monthly Herald

A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa (War) By A.T. Williams Jonathan Cape, UK ISBN 0224096885 304pp.