Britain’s first war criminal jailed for one year
In a case that exposed senior commanders to accusations they had authorised abuse, Corporal Donald Payne was also kicked out of the army, becoming the only British soldier punished in the case of Baha Musa, an Iraqi hotel receptionist who died after suffering 93 separate injuries from beatings while in British custody in 2003.
Payne had entered his guilty plea to the war crime of abusing prisoners at the start of an eight-month trial that then failed to secure convictions against six others, including his unit’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jorge Mendonca.
