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British knew Iraqis badly treated soon after invasion
British officials knew about "difficulties" in the treatment of detainees within months of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the chief of MI6 said yesterday.
Sir John Sawers told the inquiry into the war he was aware of problems with poor conditions and "possibly unnecessary violence" being used against Iraqi prisoners from as early as June 2003.
But he insisted the revelations about detainee abuse by US soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq that emerged in 2004 were "way beyond" what the UK had envisaged.
Sir John, the UK's special envoy to Iraq from May to July 2003, said: "We knew of difficulties in the conditions for detainees dating back to June, July of 2003.
"But the revelations at Abu Ghraib were definitely a shock to us, as they were to everybody on the American side as well as across the world.
"They were way beyond anything that we envisaged that might be going wrong.
"We thought the basic problems were about poor conditions and possibly unnecessary violence, but Abu Ghraib was an extra dimension."
Sir John told the inquiry that spring 2004 was a low point for those in Britain responsible for policy on Iraq.
"It was then that we realised the scale of the task that was ahead of us and the need to really put our heads down and be in it for the longer term because the insurgency and the violence was clearly not at a peak and it was clearly going to get worse at that stage," he said.
"The Abu Ghraib issues just added another nasty twist to the difficulties that we faced."
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Sunday 27 May 2012
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