British soldiers who forced a 15-year-old Iraqi boy into a canal and watched him drown after the 2003 invasion of the country have been condemned by a judge heading an inquiry into the incident. Ahmed Jabbar Kareem Ali was one of a number of Iraqi civilians who were forced into canals and rivers as British troops struggled to contain widespread looting that was triggered by the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Newman said that all four youths “must have been terrified” and that Ali was “aggressively manhandled and assaulted” by the soldiers. The judge was scathing about the soldiers’ “manifest failure” to take any action to save the drowning boy’s life. Soon, British troops found there were insufficient facilities to detain the large numbers of men and youths engaged in stealing.

Source: The Guardian September 16, 2016 13:41 UTC