'Get up you ape'–video reveals abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British soldier

A British soldier screamed at hooded Iraqi prisoners, calling them "apes", and others made Iraqis cry out in an "orchestrated choir" and forced one detainee to dance "in the style of Michael Jackson", the public inquiry into the death in military custody of Baha Mousa heard today. At its opening in London, the inquiry into the death of the hotel receptionist heard fresh evidence about how he and eight other civilians seized by British troops in Basra in September 2003 were abused by interrogation methods that had been condemned over decades by successive governments. A video of a British soldier screaming abuse at the hooded detainees was played to the hearing. It showed Corporal Donald Payne, formerly of the 1st Battalion, Queen's Lancashire Regiment, swearing at the moaning Iraqis as they were forced to maintain "stress positions" with their knees bent. The hooded prisoners, who had been picked up by British forces at the Ibn al-Haitham hotel, where Mousa worked, had their hands tightly bound with plastic. They moaned and whimpered as Payne stood over one of them and yelled: "Get up, you fucking ape, now. Get up now."