IRAQ: British army prosecutors have dropped charges of humiliation and sexual abuse against a soldier who has admitting assaulting Iraqi detainees in Iraq in May 2003.
The news came as the British Ministry of Defence in London announced that seven British soldiers had been charged with the murder of an Iraqi civilian.
A spokesman for an army court martial in Germany said the decision to drop the last remaining charge against Lance Cpl Darren Larkin (30) was made because of a lack of evidence.
He was accused of forcing Iraqi men to strip and simulate sex acts while they were photographed at a humanitarian warehouse near the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
On Tuesday, a witness for the prosecution said he was no longer confident of his earlier statement that Lance Cpl Larkin was the soldier seen in some of the abuse photographs.
The photographs came to the attention of the British army in May 2003, and three soldiers who were involved, all from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, went on trial last month at a British army base in Osnabrück, western Germany.
Lance Cpl Larkin has already pleaded guilty to a battery charge after prosecutors identified him in one photo as standing on a bound Iraqi man.
Prosecutors dropped another charge that the second soldier, Cpl Daniel Kenyon (33), helped Cpl Larkin force the detainees to strip. Cpl Kenyon still faces five other abuse charges which he denies.
The third soldier on trial, Lance Cpl Mark Cooley (25), still faces charges that he placed a detainee on the raised forks of a forklift and drove it around, as well as simulating assault, as seen in the photographs.
Their defence lawyers say their camp commander, Maj Dan Taylor, ordered them to round up looters of humanitarian supplies in the camp in an operation known as Operation Ali Baba - after the story Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves.
Maj Taylor allegedly told the soldiers that captured looters should "made to work hard". However he testified that he ordered soldiers to deter but not mistreat looters as documented in the 22 photographs.
Prosecuting counsel has described his order as "unauthorised" and a breach of the Geneva Convention. Maj Taylor, however, was merely given a dressing down in a letter from his commanding officer for his "well-meaning, misguided zeal".
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence in London confirmed yesterday that seven British soldiers would face court martial for killing an Iraqi civilian, Nadhem Abdullah, near a checkpoint in Uzayra, southern Iraq, during a military operation on May 11th, 2003.
The British Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, identified three of the soldiers as Cpl Scott Evans, Pte William Nerney and Daniel Harding.
The others will be named after they have been informed of the charges they face. The seven soldiers were all members of the 3rd Battalion the Parachute Regiment. Pte Harding has since left the army.
Another British soldier, Trooper Kevin Williams, will stand trial at the Old Bailey in London accused of the murder of an Iraqi man in southeastern Iraq in August 2003.