source: Progressive International

published: 1 December 2025

Image Credit: Pexels/Duda at www.pexels.com

Newly published photographic evidence, alongside archived testimonies from a public inquiry, documents a pattern of systemic abuse inflicted on Iraqi civilians by British soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment in 2003.

This abuse occurred with the knowledge and sanction of senior officers, who ordered that detainees be dealt with "harshly." Despite a public inquiry, there was a near-total lack of accountability, with almost none of the soldiers involved in these specific episodes facing prosecution.

A shirtless British soldier, clinging to the hair of an Iraqi man whose eyes and nose have been tightly wrapped with black gaffer tape.

A line of eight Iraqi men with sand bags over their heads, crouched in stress positions on a pavement as a soldier points at them from across a street.

These are among several images, published by Declassified today, which further document the abuse Iraqi civilians endured at the hands of British soldiers after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

They are being published as Iraqis go to the polls in a national parliamentary election where the incumbent prime minister has reiterated calls for Western forces to leave the country.

Some of the photos, taken in Basrain September 2003, show members of the local Garamsche tribe detained by British soldiers from the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment who were ordered to round them up and deal with them “harshly.”

Less than a week later, soldiers from the same regiment would subject Iraqi civilian Baha Mousa and eight other detainees to “gratuitous violence”, including beatings, stress positions and episodes of sexual humiliation, a public inquiry later found.

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