SOLDIERS who beat suspected Iraqi insurgents in Basra celebrated like it was Christmas, one of the alleged victims claimed yesterday.

Ahmad Taha Musa al-Matairi, an hotel owner, said that he thought he was going to die when he was continuously punched and kicked by members of The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment.

Mr al-Matairi, told the court martial in Bulford Camp, Wiltshire, that soldiers took bets on who could make him fall down during the violent interrogation.

Mr al-Matairi said he was arrested at his hotel in Basra in September 2003 and taken for questioning at the regiment’s base near by. From the start, he said, he was hooded and repeatedly beaten and kicked.

The suspected insurgents were allegedly detained for 36 hours, kept hooded, handcuffed, deprived of sleep and beaten for failing to maintain stress positions — all pre-interrogation “conditioning” techniques that the prosecution says are banned under international law.

Seven soldiers from the regiment are standing trial on charges relating to the Iraqis’ alleged ordeal, which led to the death of Baha Musa, 26.

Mr al-Matairi, one of whose brothers was killed by Saddam Hussein’s regime, said he felt hurt at being ill-treated by British soldiers he had welcomed to Iraq.

“I put flowers in my children’s hands to welcome the British soldiers when they came to free us from Saddam,” he told the court through an interpreter.

“I could not believe that these were criminals from Britain. According to our knowledge it was a civilised country.” Mr al-Matairi said that he feared that the treatment he received would leave his three children fatherless. “They [the soldiers] were celebrating the beatings like it was Christmas,” he said.

The court was told that a cache of weapons was found at the hotel. Mr al-Matairi and nine of his staff were arrested as suspected insurgents but in court he insisted that the weaponry was for protection.

He said the soldiers wanted help to find a man called Haitham, after whom the hotel was named, but Mr al-Matairi said that he was unable to help because he did not know where he was.

Mr al-Matairi claims to have heard the harrowing cries of Baha Musa before he died. “Baha kept crying ‘blood, blood, I’m going to die’. His wife had cancer and had passed away six months earlier. He kept saying ‘My children are going to be orphans, I’m going to die, blood, blood.’ The interpreter [helping the soldiers] was not interpreting that for him.”

A doctor saw him after the death of Mr Musa, he said, and said he should not be beaten any more or he, too, would die.

Tim Owen, QC, for Corporal Donald Payne, the alleged leader of the abuse who admits treating the detainees inhumanely but denies killing Mr Musa, said that Mr al-Matairi was greatly exaggerating.

However, Mr al-Matairi replied: “I do not exaggerate. I told less than all that happened, maybe a quarter of all that happened.”

Corporal Payne, 35, of the QLR — now part of The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment — denies a third charge of perverting the course of justice.

Lance Corporal Wayne Crowcroft, 22, and Private Darren Fallon, 23, are charged with inhumane treatment of Iraqi civilians.

The inhumane treatment charge faced by these three is being brought as a war crime under the International Criminal Court Act 2001.

Sergeant Kelvin Stacey, 29, is accused of actual bodily harm with an alternative count of common assault.

Major Michael Peebles, 35, and Warrant Officer Mark Davies, 37, both of the Intelligence Corps, each faces a charge of negligently performing a duty.

Colonel Jorge Mendonca, 42, former commander of the QLR, is also accused of negligently performing a duty, that of failing to ensure the Iraqi detainees were not ill-treated.

The hearing continues.

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