Here’s some advice for Gordon Brown as he decides whether 91 Iraqi interpreters and their families will likely live or die. Open your own book, Courage: Eight Portraits, and re-read the chapter on Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat in Nazi-occupied Budapest in 1944.

Like Baghdad now, Budapest was ruled by terror and chaos. Its Jews were crammed into ghettos, where Hungarian Nazi militiamen roamed, torturing and killing at will, their brutality rivalling that of Sunni and Shia death squads today. With a handful of helpers, Wallenberg saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews. He issued papers placing Jews under Swedish protection. He personally confronted gunmen and SS officers, removing Jews from deportation trains.

Tragically, Wallenberg vanished into the Soviet labour camps at the war’s end. But his heroism still echoes through the decades, testimony to the difference one man can make. It stands in stark contrast to the bureaucrats and paper-shufflers, the “desk-murderers” who never stepped inside a concentration camp but whose diligence made the Holocaust possible.

The British Government, it seems, also includes potential “desk-murderers”. Good cop Gordon Brown promises a review of the interpreters’ situation, but Des Browne – a man in a charge of a ministry that cannot even provide adequate kit for its own soldiers – plays bad cop, proclaiming that no decision on their fate will be made until the autumn.

Background

• Soldiers outraged that interpreters rebuffed

• ‘If we stay the militia will kill us’

• Analysis: why Iraqi claims unsettle Brown

Hundreds of Iraq interpreters rebuffed by UK

Nearly half of applications to settle in Britain have been rejected by the MoD already despite safety fears

Multimedia

• Video: the online war

• Pictures: Life in Iraq

Background

• Story of brothers who worked for the British

• I’ve no regrets, says interpreter

• What’s Arabic for ‘we’ll stand by you’?

• Abandoned: the 91 Iraqis who risked all

Of course, Britain cannot save every victim of the Iraq war. But it does have a moral responsibility to save those (and their families) who risked their lives to assist British troops, and who will almost certainly be targeted for death and torture once the soldiers leave. And let’s not overlook a practical military issue here: who will ever work for the British Army in a warzone if they know that later they will be tossed aside like a spent cartridge?

The Government’s tactic is the oldest one: bleating that if an exception is made for the interpreters then other Iraqis who have worked for the British will demand entry to the UK. The floodgates would be opened, it says. The numbers have already risen from 15,000 on Tuesday to 20,000 yesterday. Home Office figures about the numbers of potential refugees are as reliable as President Bush’s claims that Saddam had nuclear weapons. Either way, we invaded Iraq in the name of freedom and democracy, words that for the interpreters now prove to be empty.

So, Prime Minister, unlike the heroic Swede you need no physical courage to save the lives of those under sentence of death. There is no reason to wait until autumn to decide the interpreters’ fate. Raoul Wallenberg would have done the right thing. Will you?

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