How to Commit Murder and Get Away With It...

...Join the British Army.

This is what Colonel Jorge Mendonca, Major Michael Peebles, Warrant Officer Mark Davies, Lance Corporal Wayne Crowcroft, Sergeant Kelvin Stacey and Private Darren Fallon did.

They, Lieutenant Craig Rogers (who was never tried) and numerous other British soldiers whose identity is being kept secret by the British Army, systematically abused and tortured several innocent Iraqi civilians as vengeance after a British Army officer was killed. Unfortunately for the soldiers one of their victims, Baha Mousa, had the discourtesy to die as a result of their brutality.

They weren't the first of the foreign occupiers to commit war crimes in Iraq. But they were one of the few whose crimes have been discovered by the outside world. And what happened next?

Were they tried by the Iraqi courts because the crimes were committed in Iraq against Iraqis? No.

Were they tried by the International Courts of Justice in Hague because these were war crimes? No.

They were tried in Britain by a British court consisting of officers from the British Army. And surprise, surprise they were all acquitted.

The only British soldier who will face any punishment for these heinous war crimes is Corporal Donald Payne. But even he is only facing punishment for "inhumanely treating Iraqi civilians".

No British soldier will be brought to justice for the murder and torture that was committed by the British Army in Basra in September 2003.

One wonders if the roles had been reversed, and that it was British civilians who had been tortured and murdered by Iraqi soldiers, whether British authorities would be happy if the only outcome was that one single individual was punished for "inhumanely treating British civilians"?