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British soldier tells of forced sex simulations in Iraq
By James Mackenzie
January 28, 2005
Osnabrueck - The soldier who took pictures of Iraqi detainees being abused by
British troops described how captured looters were forced to simulate sex acts
while laughing soldiers watched.
Fusilier Gary Bartlam was giving evidence on Thursday at the court martial of
three fellow British soldiers accused of abusing and sexually humiliating
detainees caught in an operation to deter theft of aid supplies from a base
near Basra in May 2003.
Describing a scene he witnessed after more than 20 suspected looters had been
captured and brought into the base to tidy up the mess they caused by
pillaging, Bartlam said two detainees had been taken to a warehouse in the base
complex.
"Basically, there was one in front and one behind, with their thumbs up,
pretending to do it," he said.
Asked by prosecuting officer Nick Clapham to define what he meant by "it",
Bartlam said: "Well, buggery."
Speaking quietly in a thick Staffordshire accent which prompted defence lawyers
to ask for clarification several times, Bartlam said the troops were in a
light-hearted mood.
"People were laughing and bantering on at what's actually going on, thinking it
was funny," he said.
Like a number of other soldiers on the scene, he said he had taken photographs
as a memento, something he said he frequently did while in Iraq.
"Some of them (the soldiers) jumped down, moved them around, pretending to give
a blow job," he said.
"They got them on their knees, ordered them like," he said, adding that the
soldiers had gestured to the detainees what they were to do but stressing that
no actual sex acts had occurred.
"It was just acting. None of these sexual acts actually took place," he said.
Photographs
Corporal Daniel Kenyon and lance corporals Darren Larkin and Mark Cooley are
charged with mistreating a group of detainees during the incident described by
Bartlam. They deny the charges, although Larkin has pleaded guilty to one count
of assault.
Bartlam was convicted on similar charges in a separate court martial earlier
this month.
The case came to light after Bartlam took photographs of the incident to be
developed at a photo shop in his home town of Tamworth in England and was
reported to police by shop staff. The photographs were made public last week,
sparking worldwide outrage.
The trial is the latest in a series of hearings into alleged abuses by soldiers
in Iraq since photographs of U.S. troops humiliating Iraqi prisoners at
Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail emerged last year.
Bartlam earlier described how the looters were captured and driven back into
camp by soldiers who forced them to run along carrying boxes of powdered milk
they had looted.
"We tapped some of them, hitting them. Some of them were falling back, just
tapping them on the back of the legs to keep them running," he said.
He said he had seen and photographed an Iraqi suspended on a forklift truck
driven by Cooley but said that Kenyon had appeared to be angry and had
admonished Cooley, who is charged with disgraceful conduct of a cruel kind.
He himself had been worried by the incident but had not complained, partly
because he had only recently recovered from a broken jaw after an assault by
another lance corporal. Reuters
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