IRAQ: The lives of British troops in Iraq may have been put at risk by the publication of photographs apparently showing British soldiers torturing and abusing an Iraqi prisoner, the British government said yesterday.
Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram said the military authorities would leave "no stone unturned" in their efforts to establish the truth behind the pictures published in the Daily Mirror on Friday.
Ministers, meanwhile, were bracing themselves for legal action from the families of Iraqi civilians allegedly killed by British troops aimed at forcing the government to pay compensation. Lawyers representing 14 Iraqi families were due to lodge papers at the High Court in London seeking a judicial review.
The lawyers involved include a barrister from Matrix Chambers - the chambers of the Prime Minister's wife, Cherie Blair - and the Birmingham-based Public Interest Lawyers.
In a statement to the House of Commons, Mr Ingram called on the Mirror to co-operate fully with the inquiry into the abuse allegations being carried out by the Royal Military Police Special Investigation Branch (SIB). He insisted the claims - said to involve soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment - were already undermining the work of the armed forces trying to restore stability in Iraq.
"These allegations have been put right across the Arab world and also into Iraq," he told MPs. "There is always a question of lives being put at risk because of what may prove to be unfounded allegations, so it is on the conscience of those who run it in this way."
While he said that the Ministry of Defence had taken the photographs at face value, he confirmed that the SIB was examining their authenticity.
In its editorial yesterday, the Mirror said that it had "no doubt" that the photographs were genuine.
However, former members of the regiment and some newspapers have said the pictures appeared to be staged.
