The day after a firefight in May 2004 between British soldiers and insurgents, the bodies of 20 Iraqis were returned to their families. At the time, many relatives claimed the corpses showed signs of torture. Now an investigation by Greater Manchester police has raised the disturbing possibility of an army cover-up. Rajeev Syal and Mark Townsend report

A military investigation into one of the most notorious incidents of the Iraq conflict, in which British soldiers allegedly murdered and mutilated unarmed Iraqis, has been severely criticised by police called in to assess its credibility.

A new inquiry has found that the Royal Military Police – who are responsible for investigating claims of wrongdoing by soldiers – failed to collect forensic evidence, ignored key witnesses and did not ask Iraqi witnesses relevant questions as they investigated the “Battle of Danny Boy” and its aftermath.

The 120-page Greater Manchester police report into the RMP’s Special Investigation Branch (SIB), which has been obtained by the Observer, concludes that some interviews with Iraqi detainees may have been conducted in an effort to justify their arrest, not to probe human rights abuses. The report is expected to be significant for a judicial review that will examine the Iraqi claims next week.

The army investigation centred on a firefight between soldiers from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (PWRR) and insurgents at a road checkpoint known among the troops as Danny Boy, near Majar al-Kabir in Maysan province, on 14 May 2004. The next day the bodies of 20 Iraqis were returned to their families.

Several Iraqi witnesses claimed that some of the 20 were taken as prisoners to Camp Abu Naji, an army base in Amara, to be interrogated and tortured, before being killed. Evidence of torture and mutilation allegedly included close-range bullet wounds, the removal of eyes and stab wounds, according to evidence presented by human rights lawyers.

The Ministry of Defence has maintained that all 20 died “on the battlefield” and their bodies were taken to Abu Naji to be photographed, to see if one was an insurgent suspected of helping to kill six military police the previous year. It said only nine live prisoners were taken to the camp, and all left alive.

The subsequent investigation conducted by the Red Caps, as the RMP is known, cleared British forces of any wrongdoing and found no evidence to back any of the Iraqi claims.

However, Det Supt Martin Bottomley, from Greater Manchester police’s major crime unit, conducted a month-long inquiry into the RMP investigation and found that it was flawed from its earliest days. In his report Bottomley concluded that army investigators neither secured nor preserved evidence in the crucial days following the incident. Interviews were not conducted at that time, which may have allowed potential witnesses and suspects to alter their accounts or leave the area.

“Such a delay has potential implications in relation to issues such as evidence recovery, forensic opportunities, scene security and witness opportunities,” the report states.

Military investigators also missed a clear opportunity to question the nine Iraqi detainees, even though they were aware that the men had accused British officers of vicious assaults, the report concluded.

“Clearly, all but one of the nine detainees were also potential key and significant witnesses who may have been in a position to provide information in relation to the allegations of torture, mutilation of bodies and murder,” wrote Bottomley. The detainees were interviewed 76 days after their arrest.

After reading notes from army investigators discussing detainee interviews, Bottomley suspected that they were predominantly interested in justifying their arrests, not uncovering the truth. “[It] implies that there was a need to interview the detainees solely to justify detention since 14 May, and not to interview them in relation to the serious allegations that had been made,” he wrote.

A key finding of the police report is that Captain Lucy Bowen of the RMP, who was the first officer to be in charge of the investigation of the firefight, admitted to detectives that she did not have the credentials or the time to run such a complex investigation. “I did not believe I was sufficiently qualified to deal with a shooting investigation of this magnitude, particularly not with the amount of work my section was already dealing with,” she told police. When Bowen raised these concerns with a senior officer, she was told that she was in danger of undermining her position, the police investigation reveals.

Case notes written by Bowen show that, for more than a month after the firefight, she was unsure whether she was allowed to investigate fully the incident and to whom she should be talking. Meanwhile, evidence relating to any of the alleged mutilations and murders could have been moved or destroyed, witnesses were able to leave the scene and the bodies of alleged victims may have been buried.

However, she was waiting for permission from senior officers in the regiment to complete a shooting incident review – a requirement by the army that could have sparked a full RMP investigation.

Three days after the shooting incident, she wrote a note in her case diary describing her concerns: “Have not been permitted to investigate by the unit… to date. It is believed that… the requirement for an investigation will be dispensed with… PM [the Provost Marshal, the head of the Royal Military Police] and I both disagree with this. Explained loss of evidence, etc.”

By 19 May, Bowen had become aware that allegations had surfaced alleging ill-treatment of detainees. She wrote that soldiers from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment could still not be interviewed. “PWRR will not co-operate and release troops for interview. Potential problem. Informed PM.”

On 20 May, Bowen again stood down from proceeding with a full investigation, but was permitted to look into the allegations of assault, which include one detainee being beaten with a rock and another jumped upon while handcuffed. She had been contacted by a superior, who explained that “all investigations into this matter are on hold pending the arrival of a legal adviser to review the situation and review whether an investigation is required,” she wrote.

The attitude of Bowen’s superiors changed on 19 June, 36 days after the incident, when they became aware that the media planned to publish allegations of ill-treatment of prisoners. According to the police report, Bowen was shown correspondence from Lieutenant-Colonel Matt Maer, the commanding officer of the regiment, which claimed that he had asked the Red Caps to investigate the incident days earlier.

Bowen denied Maer’s alleged claims in her case notes. “This is absolutely untrue. The PWRR has never to date tasked the SIB to investigate anything at all,” she wrote.

The delay in launching an official RMP investigation was crucial, according to the police report. “Such a delay has potential impact in relation to issues such as evidence recovery, forensic opportunities, scene security and witness opportunities, all of which could be adversely affected by lack of action in the early stages of an investigation,” wrote Bottomley.

Police also questioned why a new forces’ investigator was appointed to the inquiry as each tour of duty ended, slowing the pace of a complex and difficult inquiry. Between 2004 and 2008, four military investigators have led the Danny Boy investigation. Two of these – Bowen and Captain Graham Smith – were not accredited senior investigating officers.

While 150 army personnel and 50 Iraqi nationals were interviewed as part of the 2005 SIB investigation, even by September 2008 the RMP had not identified all members of army personnel who had come into contact with Iraqi nationals. The original Red Cap investigation concluded in March 2005, clearing all military personnel of wrongdoing. But after lawyers representing Iraqis sought a judicial review of the process, a new investigation was opened in September 2007.

Two new investigating officers took up the task. However, despite the obvious mistakes made during the first investigation, they were not told if they were supposed to be reviewing the previous investigation, re-investigating the investigation or examining new claims that had arisen from lawyers.

“The senior investigating officer was kept in a state of uncertainty, not only to her own role, but also as to the nature of the inquiry itself,” Bottomley wrote. This continued until April 2008, when the officer in question was transferred to another post.

The apparently ad hoc methods by which interviews took place in such a delicate inquiry puzzled the police. Red Cross officials, who first raised the allegations of torture and mutilation in May 2004, were not even interviewed by army investigators, the police report concluded.

Documents disclosed at court have shown that Red Cross officials visited the British detention facility between 17 and 19 May 2004, a few days after the incident. Though they praised some aspects of the detention centre, they referred to what they called “one major concern” – a Red Cross doctor said that, in some cases, facial injuries suggested they were inflicted when the detainees were being “held down” or “defenceless”.

The MoD conceded the need for an independent investigation into the Danny Boy incident this month, after it was forced to admit that key documents had not been disclosed. In a letter read out in court, the defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, said he “profoundly regrets” the failures to disclose relevant documents. Though he denied the allegations of mutilation and murder, he said he was prepared to set up an inquiry under European human rights legislation.

Six Iraqis who sought a full, independent inquiry include Khuder al-Sweady, uncle of teenager Hamid al-Sweady, one of the 20 who died. The other five applicants were survivors of the Danny Boy incident: Hussein Fadel Abbas, Atiyah Sayid Abdelreza, Mahdi Jassim Abdullah, Hussein Jabbar Ali and Ahmad Jabbar Ahmood. They say they were punched, threatened with violence, thrown violently against a wall, hit by guards if they fell asleep, denied water and subjected to other forms of mistreatment.

Major-General Julian Thompson, former commander of the Royal Marines, said it was important to remember that the dangers and idiosyncrasies inherent in military operations in Iraq placed complex and extreme pressures on military police. “It’s all very well for the Greater Manchester police to look out of their window on a peaceful city; in Iraq, the issues are somewhat more difficult.”

But Mark Cann, director of the British Forces Foundation, said: “The military should hold itself to the highest standards at all times. If you are in these countries trying to take the high moral ground, then you have to uphold your ethics, particularly if you want to change the way other people live.”

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: “The Greater Manchester police’s peer review of what was then an ongoing Royal Military Police investigation was requested by the RMP and was designed to provide the senior investigating officer with an independent view of the investigation.

“This is normal practice in an investigation of this magnitude and complexity and is in line with civilian police best practice. The document forms part of the evidence in ongoing judicial review proceedings and therefore it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

How the case unfolded

14 May 2004: The “Battle of Danny Boy”, a fierce exchange between British soldiers and Iraqi insurgents near the town of Majar al-Kabir, Maysan. British estimates put the Iraqi deaths at 50. Residents claim relatives tending nearby fields were embroiled in the fighting. British forces also detained a number of men and were seen transporting them from the battlefield. Up to 20 Iraqi civilians are allegedly tortured and executed; it is claimed that some of them were mutilated before they died.

15 May: 20 bodies are returned to Iraqi families by UK forces.

17-19 May: The International Committee of the Red Cross visits the detainees. Allegations of mistreatment emerge.

19 May: A draft letter is drawn up by armed forces minister to Tony Blair informing him of the allegations.

20 June: Royal Military Police investigators are eventually given permission to question soldiers and to obtain evidence about the Iraqi claims.

October 2007: Judicial review proceedings issued.

October 2008: Greater Manchester police launch review of RMP investigation.

April 2009: Government denies any wrongdoing on behalf of the soldiers and says the Iraqis were killed during the gun battle.

6 July: Government concedes that there should be a new investigation and orders a judicial review.

August: Judicial review to begin.

Army Abuses

September 2003
An Iraqi hotel receptionist, Baha Musa, dies in British military custody after sustaining 93 injuries while being detained by soldiers from the former Queen’s Lancashire Regiment in Basra, southern Iraq. In July last year the MoD paid almost £3m in compensation to the father of Musa and nine other Iraqi civilians who were abused.

February 2005
Three British soldiers are jailed for abusing Iraqi civilian prisoners at an aid facility called Camp Bread Basket in Basra during May 2003. Details of the abuse came to light after a young soldier took “trophy photographs”, including humiliating sexual images of naked Iraqi men. They only came to light after a shop assistant in Staffordshire contacted the authorities after being shocked at the pictures.

February 2006
The News of the World publishes pictures from a video allegedly showing a disturbance in the street outside what appears to be a military compound. British soldiers are shown chasing youths involved in the incident, dragging four of them into the compound and beating them on various parts of the body with batons and kicking them, one in the genitals.

July 2008
Royal Military Police reveal they are investigating another allegation against British troops in Iraq after a 14-year-old Iraqi, detained in 2003 with a group of looters, claims he was sexually abused.