A YOUNG man whose dream of becoming a soldier took him to the dock of the Old Bailey charged with murdering an Iraqi civilian walked free yesterday “with his honour intact and his head held high”, his defence counsel said.

The court was told that Trooper Kevin Williams, 22, believed he was saving a comrade’s life when he made the split-second decision to shoot dead a suspect he thought was trying to grab his weapon.

The charges brought against him appalled his colleagues in the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment. There were suggestions that some of his fellow soldiers would resign and the regiment would refuse to return to Iraq if the popular Lancashire soldier was jailed.

The case against Trooper Williams was dropped by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, after he studied the rulings of a judge and comments by military commanders at a preliminary court hearing two months ago, which were disclosed in open court only yesterday.

Trooper Williams’s ordeal began in the days after Saddam’s fall, when the British Army was adjusting to its role as a peace-keeping force.

Mrs Justice Hallett set the scene. “The troops [in Iraq] worked in dreadful physical conditions, never knowing, in a moment, that an apparently benign situation would turn into a lethal attack,” she said. “British soldiers had been killed and gravely injured, some shortly before this incident.”

Trooper Williams, from Nelson, had been serving in Badger Squadron, part of the King’s Regiment battle group in southern Iraq, in the summer of 2003. On August 2, he had been on patrol near al-Dayr when he and his fellow soldiers had seen six Iraqis moving a cart containing heavy machine-gun ammunition. The patrol had detained three of the men but one, Hassan Abbad Said, had run off.

Trooper Williams and Corporal Jeffrey Blair, of the Royal Military Police, cornered him in the courtyard of a private dwelling, Richard Horwell, for the prosecution, said. “Despite attempts to restrain him, Mr Said refused to be handcuffed. During attempts to restrain him, Trooper Williams shot Mr Said, [who] was unarmed, and he died the following day.”

The defence case was that Trooper Williams thought the Iraqi was trying to grab Corporal Blair’s sidearm, putting their lives in danger. Corporal Blair had been the only witness to the shooting and the defence argued that his account of the incident had varied.

David Nathan, QC, for Trooper Williams, told the court yesterday: “There was no doubt in his [Trooper Williams’s] mind that when he fired that gun, Mr Said was about to go for his colleague’s sidearm and cause serious injury or death to his colleague or himself. All he could do was fire his gun to save his fellow soldier’s life.”

An eloquent plea for the judge to show mercy to Trooper Williams was made in court by Major-General Graeme Lamb, who was the commander of British forces in Iraq at the time of the killing. He said: “As soldiers, we are often asked to stand in harm’s way for others. It is what we do, be that in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan or in this case, Iraq. Soldiering in these operational situations demands a great deal and it would be wrong to assume that it is easy or even a natural act.”

After the decision to prosecute — Trooper Williams was charged with murder on September 7 — anger grew among soldiers, their mothers, wives and girlfriends. A fighting fund of £68,000 was raised. Hundreds of people signed a petition declaring the case an outrage. Regimental colleagues, whose motto is “Fear Naught”, threatened to strike if Trooper Williams was convicted.

General Sir Antony Walker, a former Deputy Chief of Defence Staff who has led the campaign to free Trooper Williams, said the decision to prosecute had been “wrong and ill-conceived”. “You can’t have soldiers in Iraq being threatened and having to say, ‘Sorry, hold it for a moment, I think I may have to shoot you but I must telephone my brief first’.”

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