THE Iraqi at the centre of the war crimes allegations against Colonel Tim Collins claimed yesterday that the British commander subjected him to a mock execution.

Tracked down by The Times to Ramaila, a small desert village in southern Iraq, Ayoub Yousif Naser said that Colonel Collins put him and his son against a wall and ordered a soldier to kill them. They waited, but nothing happened.

Mr Naser also reinforced charges already made that the officer pistol-whipped him, kicked him in the shins and ribs, and fired at his son’s feet.

If true, such conduct would breach the Army’s rules of engagement and the Geneva Conventions. Colonel Collins is being investigated by the Army’s Special Investigations Branch after a junior American officer made a complaint.

Colonel Collins, lauded for his eve-of-battle speech urging the men of his Royal Irish Regiment to be “magnanimous in victory”, declined to comment on the claims, saying: “I’m not at liberty to talk at all to the media. I do apologise.”

He has previously denied the charges, but in a recent interview with the News of the World, he stated: “One man found that a shot through his kitchen floor somehow helped him remember where his weapon was hidden.”

Mr Naser, 57, is the “civic leader” mentioned in the American officer’s allegations against Colonel Collins, though he has not made any formal complaint. He was a member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party and, until recently, headmaster of al-Nukhaila primary school in Rumaila, an oil village 30 miles west of Basra. In the course of his narrative, he admitted that he lied about having weapons and produced them only after he was assaulted. It also emerged that he was widely feared by fellow villagers, many of whom applauded Colonel Collins.

Mr Naser was summoned to the civic centre by the village leader, Abu Mohaned, yesterday to give the fullest account yet of then events behind the allegations. Shown a picture of Colonel Collins, he nodded and told an interpreter: “That’s the man who hit me.”

He described how Colonel Collins, an Egyptian interpreter and about ten British soldiers had arrived at his prefabricated house at about 10.30 one night early in the war when Saddam loyalists were still sniping at coalition forces.

“I was asleep upstairs when there was a knock on the door. My son opened the door. The British officer asked if I was in, and I was woken up,” he said.

“He and the interpreter entered my house. I had just woken up and I was not concentrating. He asked me if I had any guns and whether I was a Baath party member. I said ‘No’ because I was tired.

“Suddenly this officer took out his pistol and hit me on the back of the head. I was hit twice, and I fell down. There was a lot of blood on my head. After he had hit me I told him that I had guns. I had two Kalashnikov machineguns, one to guard the school and the other was held for the party.

“I told him they were buried in the garden and he told my son to go and dig them up. My wife and daughter witnessed everything and were crying. When my son turned to go for the guns, the officer shot at his feet to hurry him up. There is a hole in the carpet.”

Mr Naser, who speaks a little English, claims that Colonel Collins then pulled him up by his collar and dragged him outside. “He kicked me in the leg and I was laid on my stomach. When my son came back with the guns, the officer dropped them on top of me. He kicked me again, in the legs and the ribs.

“Then my son and I were taken to the civic centre and told to face the wall and put our hands up. I heard the officer give an order to a soldier, ‘Kill them’. I heard the soldier pull back the breech.” Mr Naser’s 21-year-old son, Nawfel, backed up the story.

Mr Naser says he feared for his life. But then he saw other British soldiers approaching him with bandages, and they began to tend his bleeding head. He pointed to two small scars on his head.

“The doctors treated me with more respect. After treatment, the officer took me to another room and told me he was sorry he hit me. He said he was sorry to hit an old man who was a headmaster. But I had lied to him. But I lied because I thought that if I admitted I had guns he would hurt me. Of course it’s wrong for officers to do what he did. He should be punished.”

The Royal Military Police have visited Mr Naser’s house, measured the rooms and removed evidence, including part of the carpet.

There appeared to be little sympathy for Mr Naser in the village. As the senior Baathist representative in Rumaila, he was both feared and despised, according to other villagers.

Mr Mohaned, the village chief, said: “The matter happened in the house of the headmaster. No one else in the village saw it. The officer became nervous and he hit him because he lied. There were no other incidents with the British. In fact, we found the British very friendly and polite.”

Mawood Jabar, a 29-year-old student, said that 80 per cent of the village agreed that Mr Naser “deserved what happened to him. He is a hated figure here. We know him as the thief Ayoub because he stole from the schoolchildren.”

Mr Jabar said he recognised Colonel Collins’s photograph. “He was very nice and had good manners.”

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