16.3 |
Military fatalities and the bereaved
•
Service
Police in Basra were “operating at full stretch and had a
considerable
backlog”. A
key constraint was that relatively few Service Police
investigators
were
qualified to Level 3 (able to carry out the investigations into the
most
serious
offences). More investigative personnel should be trained to the
Level 3
standard,
and deployed.
•
Service
Police in Basra needed more equipment and administrative
support.83
132.
On the
timeliness of investigations, the review stated:
“There can
be both avoidable and unavoidable delays, but complex
investigations
and the
post‑investigative processes do take time and speed must not be at
the
expense of
quality. That said, some trimming may be possible in respect of
the
timescales
for some steps in the process.”
133.
The review
recommended that the timescales for the individual steps of
the
post‑investigative
process should be revalidated.
134.
The review
also identified the practical difficulties in undertaking
investigations in
a
non‑permissive environment such as Iraq, including:
•
A number of
Service Police personnel had been tasked to train the Iraqi
Police
Service.
•
Service
Police needed force protection, which was not always
available.
•
Access to
the crime scene and to witnesses could be difficult, and could
cause
further
tension.
135.
Lt Gen Irwin
told the Inquiry:
“... as the
operation [in Iraq] developed, it began to be something that came
to
my
attention and, therefore, could be regarded as a possible problem,
that the
Royal
Military Police were not there in sufficient numbers to do
everything that was
required of
them in a completely timely fashion.
“Now, of
course, when you are trying to investigate incidents when there is
shooting
going on,
there is always going to be a delay that would not occur in the
normal
circumstance,
but nevertheless I began to get a feeling that maybe there were
not
enough
military police in Iraq and maybe also that, extrapolating from
that, there
were not
enough military policemen ... in the British Army.
“So I spent
– I would not say every day, but quite regularly I used to speak to
the
Provost
Marshal (Army) and ask him the direct question, looking at him in
the eye,
‘Have we
got an issue here? Are your people bearing up to the strain? Are
they
going over
too often with too short tour intervals? Do you want me to try to
find some
other way
of reinforcing you, like doing something which the bureaucracy
sometimes
83
Report
Loudon, 12 October 2004, ‘Review of Service Police Investigations
on Operations’.
101