British soldiers serving in Iraq who mistreated civilian prisoners — using restraining techniques banned for more than 30 years — were ill prepared and poorly trained for the violent insurgency that erupted in the early summer of 2003, a long-awaited report by a senior army officer has concluded.

Brigadier Robert Aitken, director of Army Personnel Strategy, said that a number of soldiers had behaved disgracefully and treated Iraqi detainees “in a deliberate and callous manner”.

But the abuse was not symptomatic of a general breakdown in discipline in the Army, he added. The vast majority of soldiers and officers had conducted themselves honourably and professionally.

In the worst abuse case, Baha Musa, a 26-year-old hotel receptionist, died after suffering 93 injuries while being held in detention for 36 hours by soldiers from the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment. Eight other Iraqis suffered “varying degrees of abuse”.

A further inquiry into this case, after the acquittal of six of the seven soldiers charged with offences connected with Mr Musa’s death, was promised yesterday by General Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff. He raised the possibility that “further individuals” might face administrative action that could lead to dismissal.

“This case is not closed and I am not satisfied or comfortable that there are people potentially who have done wrong things \ that they think they have got away with it — I am afraid that is not the case,” General Dannatt said, in a statement at the Ministry of Defence. While acknowledging that the actions of the “tiny” number of soldiers involved in abusing Iraqi civilians had undermined “the entire Army’s” reputation, Brigadier Aitken pointed the finger of blame higher up the chain of command for what happened over a period of months in 2003 and early 2004.

Commissioned in 2005 by General Sir Mike Jackson, then Chief of the General Staff, to discover whether acts of abuse were an endemic part of prisoner-handling in that period, Brigadier Aitken said that the ban on five interrogation techniques imposed in 1972 — hooding, sleep deprivation, subjection to noise, wall-standing in a stress position and withholding of food and drink — appeared to have been forgotten.

Mr Musa and the eight other Iraqi detainees were double-hooded with hessian sacks, forced to stand with their knees bent and arms outstretched, and deprived of sleep.

“Determining exactly how and when specific direction in 1972 [by Edward Heath, then the Prime Minister, after abuse allegations against IRA prisoners in Northern Ireland] came to be lost in 2003 would have to be a matter for separate investigation,” Brigadier Aitken said. The five techniques had now been proscribed formally for all prisoner handling and interrogation.

Colonel Daoud Musa, the father of Baha Musa, denounced the report’s main finding that only a small number of individual soldiers were to blame for the abuse. “As a senior officer in the Iraqi Army, I am clear that these terrible actions could not have taken place without support from senior officers within the British Army. They either knew, or ought to have known, what was happening . . . I hold them to account for what happened to my son,” he said.

Although Brigadier Aitken emphasised in his report — An investigation into cases of deliberate abuse and unlawful killing in Iraq 2003 and 2004 — that measures had been taken to redress the weaknesses he had uncovered, he said those responsible for preparing troops for Iraq seemed to have a “lack of awareness of the operational context” of the campaign.

Measures to ensure abuse cases never reoccur include an order that detainees can be handcuffed only in front of the body. Brigadier Aitken said that some soldiers and commanders had failed to live up to the Army’s core values of selfless commitment, courage, discipline, integrity, loyalty and respect for others. “Courage includes having the moral courage to challenge unacceptable behaviour whenever it is encountered,” he said.

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