A serving British soldier has revealed how his Iraqi interpreter was texted a video of one of his friends being tortured to death, it emerged today.

SInce The Times highlighted the plight of the 91 Iraqi interpreters who are being refused special treatment when they claim asylum in Britain, troops have flooded onto Times Online and Army services forums to express their frustrations at the British policy.

Several had their own, firsthand stories of the brutality meted out to interpreters seen by their fellow countrymen as collaborating with the occupying Brititsh forces.

“These men have put their lives on the line for us not only at work, but at home as well,” RFUK posted on the military website arrse.com. “In Afghanistan, one of the LECs (interpreters) who worked for us was brutally executed and his body dumped for us to find. I have a photograph if it would prove a point.”

Hundreds of Iraq interpreters rebuffed by UK

Nearly half of applications to settle in Britain have been rejected by the MoD already despite safety fears

Multimedia

• Video: the online war

• Pictures: Life in Iraq

BACKGROUND

• Story of brothers who worked for the British

• I’ve no regrets, says interpreter

• What’s Arabic for ‘we’ll stand by you’?

• Abandoned: the 91 Iraqis who risked all

Related Links

• No action on Iraqi interpreters for months

• Analysis: why Iraqi claims unsettle Brown

• Interpreters beg for asylum

The Army Rumour Service (arrse.com) is a popular place for serving troops anonymously to debate issues affecting the armed services. Many other users have posted their own experiences of using local interpreters, including one author who claimed to know one of the men affected in Basra.

El_Pato explained why the fear was so acute for the interpreters who may be left behind: “I know the LEC who spurred this, he is a very good man, who deserves better, and who was texted a rather graphic video of one of his friends being tortured and killed."

Not everybody leaving a post was sympathetic. One concluded, “They took the job!”, but most were aware of the psychological damage that could be inflicted by abandoning the interpreters in Iraq.

“Not only is this shameful – doesn’t anyone in this government realise the message this sends out when we try to win hearts and minds !!” RABC posted on arrse.com.

This outrage has been echoed throughout the military, in letters and interviews. 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.

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