Untitled Document
The following Reuters report raises some disturbing questions.
Why were undercover British "soldiers" wearing traditional
Arab headscarves firing at Iraqi police?
The incident took place just prior to a major religious event in Basra.
The report suggests that the police thought the British soldiers looked
"suspicious". What was the nature of their mission?
Occupation forces are supposesd to be collaborating with Iraqi authorities.
Why did Britsh Forces have to storm the prison using tanks and armoured vehicles
to liberate the British undercover agents?
"British forces used up to 10 tanks " supported by helicopters
" to smash through the walls of the jail and free the two British servicemen."
Was there concern that the British "soldiers" who were being held
by the Iraqi National Guard would be obliged to reveal the nature and objective
of their undercover mission?
A report of Al Jazeera TV, which preceeded the raid on the prison,
suggests that the British undercover soldiers were driving a booby trapped car
loaded with ammunition. The Al Jazeera report (see below) also suggests that
the riots directed against British military presence were motivated because
the British undercover soldiers were planning to explode the booby trapped car
in the centre of Basra:
[Anchorman Al-Habib al-Ghuraybi] We have with us on the telephone from
Baghdad Fattah al-Shaykh, member of the Iraqi National Assembly. What are the
details of and the facts surrounding this incident?
[Al-Shaykh] In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. There
have been continuous provocative acts since the day before yesterday by the
British forces against the peaceful sons of Basra. There have been indiscriminate
arrests, the most recent of which was the arrest of Shaykh Ahmad al-Farqusi
and two Basra citizens on the pretext that they had carried out terrorist operations
to kill US soldiers. This is a baseless claim. This was confirmed to us by [name
indistinct] the second secretary at the British Embassy in Baghdad, when we
met with him a short while ago. He said that there is evidence on this. We say:
You should come up with this evidence or forget about this issue. If you really
want to look for truth, then we should resort to the Iraqi justice away from
the British provocations against the sons of Basra, particularly
what happened today when the sons of Basra caught two non-Iraqis, who seem to
be Britons and were in a car of the Cressida type. It was a booby-trapped car
laden with ammunition and was meant to explode in the centre of the city of
Basra in the popular market. However, the sons of the city of Basra
arrested them. They [the two non-Iraqis] then fired at the people there and
killed some of them. The two arrested persons are now at the Intelligence Department
in Basra, and they were held by the National Guard force, but the British occupation
forces are still surrounding this department in an attempt to absolve them of
the crime.
[Al-Ghuraybi] Thank you Fattah al-Shaykh, member of the National Assembly
and deputy for Basra.
Text of report by Qatari Al-Jazeera satellite TV on 19 September (emphasis
added)
Is this an isolated incident or is part of a pattern?
More significantly, have the occupation forces been involved in similar undercover
missions? Syrian TV (Sept 19, 2005) reports the following:
Ten Iraqis - seven police commandos, two civilians and a child - were killed
and more than 10 others wounded in the explosion of two car bombs near two checkpoints
in Al-Mahmudiyah and Al-Latifiyah south of Baghdad while hundreds of thousands
of Iraqis were heading towards the city of Karbala to mark the anniversary of
a religious event.
And in a significant incident in the city of Basra, which is also marking the
same religious event, Iraqi demonstrators set fire to two British tanks
near a police station after Iraqi police had arrested two British soldiers disguised
in civilian clothes for opening fire on police. Eight armoured British vehicles
surrounded the police station before the eruption of the confrontations. A policeman
at the scene said the two detained Britons were wearing traditional Iraqi jallabahs
[loose cloaks] and wigs.
[Italics added]
An indepth independent inquiry should be ordered by Britain's House of Commons
into the circumstances of this event.