Three soldiers were cleared today of killing a 15-year-old Iraqi boy who drowned after allegedly being forced into a canal at gunpoint.

Sergeant Carle Selman, 39, then of the Coldstream Guards and now serving with the Scots Guards, Guardsman Joseph McCleary, 24, and Guardsman Martin McGing, 22, of the Irish Guards, were found not guilty of manslaughter by a court martial panel sitting in Colchester, Essex.

Prosecutors had alleged that Ahmed Jabar Karheem, who could not swim, struggled in "obvious distress" in the Shatt al-Basra canal in Basra before disappearing under the water.

The teenager was one of four suspected Iraqi looters who were bundled into the water to "teach them a lesson" a week after the official end of the Iraq war in May, 2003, it was alleged.

But the panel cleared the soldiers today after almost five hours of deliberations.

Last month the judge cleared a fourth soldier of killing the teenager. Vice Judge Advocate General Michael Hunter ruled that Lance Corporal James Cooke, 22, of the Irish Guards, should be found not guilty of manslaughter on legal grounds.

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