It is difficult to see what a public inquiry into the death of Baha Musa will uncover that has not already been investigated and reviewed by the Army. Yet the announcement by the Ministry of Defence was unquestionably the right one.

The madness that afflicted a number of British soldiers in that detention centre in Basra, which led to the death of Mr Musa and injuries to eight other Iraqis, has never been satisfactorily explained, let alone punished in a court of law.

For the general public, which is largely supportive of the Armed Forces and wishes them well in their dangerous endeavours in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is probably little appetite for a public witch-hunt. But the families of Mr Musa and the others deserve public recompense.

The Iraqi detainees were treated grievously and there can never be an excuse for such behaviour, but the disgraceful breach of the Army’s long-established rules of good conduct, which include respect for others, took place during a period of intense hostility. The context needs to be understood when the inquiry begins.

Mr Musa died on September 15, 2003, 36 hours after being arrested by a patrol from The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment (QLR) at the hotel where he worked. On August 23 three soldiers from the Royal Military Police were killed by insurgents in central Basra, and ten days earlier Captain David Jones of the QLR, a popular officer, was killed by a roadside bomb while he was travelling in a military ambulance in Basra, taking a sick colleague to hospital. There was a frenzied atmosphere in Basra at that time. The war was over officially but the fighting had become worse and more difficult to confront. There were suspected insurgents on every street corner. Mr Musa and his companions had been detained as the result of an abortive arms search.

This was the context in which the soldiers decided to exact their own form of justice on the nine Iraqis in the apparent expectation that when they came to be interrogated they would reveal all, perhaps even confess to involvement in the recent killings of British troops. But the Iraqis were innocent.

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