Two soldiers were Wednesday convicted of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in a case that has seriously undermined the standing of the British army and been dubbed the country's Abu Ghraib. Another pleaded guilty and a fourth was sentenced last month.
Judge Advocate Michael Hunter said that the scandal had "undoubtedly tarnished the international reputation of the British army and to some extent the British nation too."
He described the behavior uncovered by the court martial as brutal, cruel and revolting, and said it had jeopardized the safety of soldiers in Iraq.
Anyone with a "shred of human decency" would have been "revolted by the pictures," Hunter said.
The men were found guilty at a court martial in Germany of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at the British Camp Breadbasket outside Basra two weeks after the conflict was declared over in May 2003. The abuse was captured in photographs which were published around the world.
But the guilty charges were not in relation to the sexual assaults on two men who were forced to simulate oral and anal sex while giving a thumbs up for the camera. The army has yet to pinpoint the culprits in that crime or act against more senior officers who broke the Geneva convention through an ill-conceived plan to punish looters.
The defendants claim that they were being held up as "sacrificial lambs" for the failings of the military.
Corporal Daniel Kenyon, 33, of the 1st Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was convicted on three charges, including the failure to report that soldiers under his command had forced two Iraqi males to strip naked and simulate sex acts. He was also found guilty of aiding and abetting another soldier who assaulted a prisoner and hung his victim from a forklift truck. He was found guilty of failing to report this to his superior officers.
Lance Corporal Mark Cooley was found guilty of disgraceful conduct of a cruel kind after he drove the forklift truck with the bound Iraqi suspended from it. He was convicted of having brought the army into disrepute by posing for a picture in which he pretended to punch an Iraqi prisoner.
Both men face a maximum two-year prison sentence and a dishonorable discharge. Their fellow soldier, Lance Corporal Darren Larkin, 30, who pleaded guilty to assaulting an Iraqi man after he was photographed standing on his body, faces up to six months.
It can now be reported for the first time that their colleague, Fusilier Gary Bartlam, 20, the soldier who sparked the abuse inquiry when he took his photographs to be developed, was sentenced to 18 months in youth custody last month and given a dishonorable discharge for being a "willing participant in this very brutal and very cruel act."
He is the first British soldier to be imprisoned for crimes committed in Iraq.
The case has brought massive embarrassment to the government and the British army, which will also face criticism for failing to find and punish the soldiers who stripped the Iraqis and forced them to put on a sex show.
The soldiers were set to be sentenced yesterday. The judge's ruling came at the end of a 22-day court martial in Osnabruck, Germany, a few hours' drive from the town where the soldiers are based. During that time the panel heard the defense claim that they had been made scapegoats for more senior officers who had broken the Geneva convention and had set the tone by allowing Iraqis to be ill-treated.
It was claimed that looters, who had stolen from the camp, were "beasted" and "thrashed" and forced to run 6km in blistering heat with boxes of milk powder on their heads.
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