Outraged reaction erupted from serving military officers, retired generals and politicians today after the revelation in The Times that nearly 100 Iraqi interpreters who have risked their lives working for the British in Basra may be abandoned to their fate when the troops are withdrawn.

One Territorial Army officer who served in Basra in 2003/2004 told The Times that his interpreter was visited by militia who held a gun to the head of his wife and children.

They threatened to kill him and his family if he did not leave the country in three days.

“Yet when I took up his case with the Home Office, he was immediately turned down for refugee status,” Major Andrew Alderson of the TA’s Queen’s Own Yeomanry said.

The 39-year-old officer, a former Lazard banker, used the interpeter as his “eyes and ears” when he was given the job of trying to restructure the economy of southern Iraq. “He was invaluable to me and took great personal risks, and these sort of people need our protection,” he said.

He fought his case and even appeared on an asylum tribunal in support of him, eventually winning the argument for him to stay in Britain.

“But it was a real struggle. The people on the tribunal didn’t seem to know what was going on in southern Iraq, they didn’t realise that Basra is now as dangerous as it is in Baghdad,” Major Alderson said.

The interpreter, “Mr Ali”, now living in Britain, told The Times: “Anyone who works for the Americans or the British in Iraq gets a visit from the militia and is told to leave the country or face assassination. I had to leave immediately and left everything behind.”

Major Alderson said another of his interpreters, a woman, was shot three times, and eventually gained asylum in Australia.

General Sir Roger Wheeler, head of the Army between 1997 and 2000, was one of many former senior officers who spoke out in support of the Iraqi interpreters. “It would seem to me that these people need special protection. If they are seen to be working for the ‘wrong side’, their chances of survival are nil, especially given the brutality going on in Iraq. We should do what the Danes did and bring our interpreters back home with us,” Sir Roger said.

Major-General Patrick Cordingley who commanded the 7th Armoured Brigade in the first Gulf War and used local interpreters, said: “The hackles rose up on my neck when I read about the treatment of the Iraqi interpreters. When you take part in expeditionary warfare there are often unexpected costs and this is one of them,” he said.

General Cordingley added: “British soldiers serving in Iraq will feel the same way, and so will the vast majority of the people in Britain. These interpreters should be allowed to come and live here.”

Patrick Mercer, Tory MP and a former army commanding officer, told The Times: “These people who put their lives on the line for us should be treated with every consideration. They are going to face recrimination when we leave Iraq and they need to be protected. It would be a dereliction of duty if we didn’t help them.”

Crispin Black, formerly a major in the Welsh Guards and now a security analyst, said: “When the forces of an occupying power leave a country, those who have worked for them face a high risk of retaliation. We went into Iraq on the understanding that we would make it a safer and more stable country. That hasn’t happened, so it is crucially important that we protect those who have helped us.”

Readers of The Times also wrote in in large numbers to protest at the Government’s attitude towards the Iraqi interpreters.

James Milton, a former captain in the Adjutant General’s Corps, who served in Iraq, wrote: “I watched these unarmed individuals working side by side with our forces, facing the same dangers as our troops and then going home to live amongst those individuals who had been targeting them hours earlier.”

He recalled one interpreter insisting on staying with the British troops when a car bomb killed a fellow interpreter because he did not want to abandon his “friends”.

“I can think of no more damning indictment of our attitude towards these people than to contrast the sentiment of this individual facing danger alongside our forces with that of our Government,” he wrote.

The Reverend David Cooper who has recently returned from 18 months in Iraq, wrote: “Its treatement of Iraqis who have supported its policies, and now have their lives threatened for doing so, presents my Government with perhaps one last chance to show some moral integrity in its dealings with the Iraqi people.”

This morning, The Times disclosed that the Government had ignored personal appeals from senior Army officers in Basra to relax asylum regulations and make special arrangements for 91 Iraqi interpreters whose loyal services have put their lives at risk.

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