Confirmed: British Soldiers Sexually Assaulted Iraqi Children in 2003

The revelations are contained in a report by the International Criminal Court.

British soldiers near Basra in 2003 (Paul Grover / Reuters).

Warning: this article contains descriptions of sexual violence.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) published a report on British war crimes in Iraq on 9 December 2020. I previously wrote two articles discussing the contents of that report (here and here). However, while writing these articles, I overlooked some crucial information contained in a footnote in the report, which reveals that two Iraqi children - a 17-year-old and a 13-year-old - were sexually assaulted and tortured by British soldiers at Camp Breadbasket. 

For context, Camp Breadbasket was a humanitarian aid distribution centre on the outskirts of Basra that was set up by the British Army after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. On 15 May 2003, British soldiers detained Iraqis at the camp who they suspected of involvement in looting, and subjected them to a variety of different abuses, some of which were documented in photographs that were subsequently published in the media in 2005. As I noted in my previous articles, the ICC report confirms that at least seven Iraqis who were detained at Camp Breadbasket were subjected to sexual violence and torture by British soldiers, and one of those victims was raped.

Footnote 142 in the ICC report states: “While the overall number of persons abused in the Camp Breadbasket incident remains unclear, there is information available with respect to 7 alleged victims (PIL 16 to PIL 22). PIL 19 and PIL 22 were 17 and 13 years old respectively at the time”. The report then confirms that all seven of these victims - including the two children - were subjected to sexual violence and torture: “The information available provides a reasonable basis to believe that members of UK armed forces committed the war crimes of other forms of sexual violence in one incident against, at a minimum, seven detainees at Camp Breadbasket in May 2003 who were also victims of torture as described above, and furthermore subjected one of those detainees to rape”.

This confirmation is repeated in the report’s ‘Conclusion’ section: “The information available further provides a reasonable basis to believe that members of UK armed forces committed the war crime of other forms of sexual violence, at a minimum, against the seven victims as well as the war crime of rape against one of those seven victims while they were detained at Camp Breadbasket in May 2003”.

The report does not disclose any further information about either PIL 19 (the 17-year-old) or PIL 22 (the 13-year-old), aside from noting that PIL 22’s Victim Statement “depicts treatment involving protracted humiliation and continuous beating with fists, boots, sticks and aerials”. The footnotes that it cites in relation to both PIL 19 and PIL 22 reference pages in the Iraq Abuse Handbook, a document that was authored in 2015 by Public Interest Lawyers, a now defunct law firm that represented the seven confirmed victims. The Iraq Abuse Handbook has not been made public. Thus, no further information can be gathered about PIL 19, but there is information available in the public domain about what was done to PIL 22.

Only one Iraqi claimant who has alleged that he was subjected to sexual violence and torture at Camp Breadbasket fits the profile of PIL 22; a man identified in legal documentation only as ‘Hassan’, who is the only claimant who reported that he was a young child when he was sexually assaulted and tortured at Camp Breadbasket in May 2003. Public Interest Lawyers initially reported in 2008 that he was 14 years old at the time of the incident, but the ICC report makes clear that he was actually 13 years old, citing information provided in the Iraq Abuse Handbook.

Hassan’s statements from 2008 match up with those attributed to PIL 22 in the ICC report; the Irish newspaper An Phoblacht reported in 2008 that Hassan described being “kicked, beaten with a car aerial, stripped naked and then forced to perform oral sex on another boy”, while his witness statement from 2008 includes the following testimony: “We tried to run away but British soldiers caught me and started beating me and others using their vehicle's aerials. They were beating us very harshly. We were led inside the hangars while still being beaten. The beating became stronger when we were inside the camp”. The statement then details sexual humiliation followed by a sexual assault of the kind that An Phoblacht reported. These descriptions fit with the ICC report’s characterisation of PIL 22’s Victim Statement from the Iraq Abuse Handbook, which, as noted above, “depicts treatment involving protracted humiliation and continuous beating with fists, boots, sticks and aerials”. 

This is Hassan’s full witness statement from 2008:

“At 7am my friends convinced me to head towards Camp Breadbasket in order to steal dried milk cartons in order to sell them on the black market. The hangars were surrounded by a high fence, though there was an opening in the fence. Next to the fence there was a road, then a river.

When we tried to leave the hangars via the opening in the fence British soldiers chased us. We tried to run away but were caught. Some Iraqis managed to escape arrest. I believe some may have drowned as they were trying to escape the British.

British soldiers caught me and started beating me and others using their vehicle's aerials. They were beating us very harshly. We were led inside the hangars while still being beaten all the way. The beating became stronger when we were inside the camp. I was kept in a hangar along with four other Iraqis.

They ordered us to take off our clothes by gesturing to us to do so. When we refused they continued beating us, so we had to follow their orders. They made us sit on each other's laps. I was with one of the detainees, while another two detainees were made to do the same thing, as in the photos. They were enjoying humiliating and abusing us. I wished I was dead at this moment. Then they made me sit with Tariq as in the other photo, where I was forced to put Tariq's penis in my mouth. The other two were made to do the same.

They locked the hangar while we were inside and left us there with no food or drink till the afternoon of the day after, when they opened the hangar and let us go. Since then I fled Basra altogether as I cannot see Tariq again after what had happened, despite the fact that we were close friends”.

It is not clear how old Hassan’s friend Tariq was, or whether he was in fact the 17-year-old victim who the ICC report confirms was also sexually assaulted at Camp Breadbasket. More investigative reporting needs to be done on this matter, if the victims are still willing to share their stories.

No one has been prosecuted for any of the sexual violence that was carried out at Camp Breadbasket. At the 2005 court martial of soldiers involved in torturing and abusing Iraqis at Camp Breadbasket, which resulted in three men being convicted and receiving minor sentences, the Judge Advocate acknowledged that the defendants were not responsible for “perhaps the worst of these offences”, namely those involving sexual violence of which there is photographic evidence. Likewise, none of the testimonies of sexual violence that surfaced after 2005 have resulted in a single prosecution. Now that the ICC has confirmed that sexual violence was carried out against seven victims at Camp Breadbasket, including two children, it is incumbent upon those of us who wish to prevent the horrors of the occupation of Iraq from being forgotten and, indeed, repeated, to ensure that this information is not buried.