Britain’s first war criminal jailed for one year

BRITAIN’S first convicted war criminal was sentenced yesterday to a year in jail for mistreating Iraqi prisoners.

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.

During the trial, witnesses testified that harsh abuse of prisoners had been authorised by the British brigade headquarters in Iraq, which allowed detainees to be “conditioned” with harsh treatment such as stress positions. Britain had denied its commanders authorised such techniques, which it considers illegal.

Musa was part of a group of Iraqi detainees that were kept blindfolded and beaten for 36 hours in detention.

The judge ruled that prosecutors had failed to identify who was behind the beatings because of an “obvious closing of the ranks” among soldiers who refused to testify against their comrades. The surviving victims were hooded when they were abused and could not identify who beat them.