Tony Blair
appeared to backtrack yesterday when his official spokesman said there was
no "absolute evidence" that two British soldiers who were killed after
being separated from their unit in southern Iraq were executed, as the
prime minister had earlier suggested.
Despite Mr Blair's unequivocal accusation that two British soldiers
were executed by Iraqi forces, his official spokesman later said: "The
bodies were some distance from the vehicles in which they were travelling.
They had lost their helmets and flak jackets. We accept that this is not
absolute evidence, but it does point in the direction that these people
were shot."
Mr Blair had been told by defence chiefs that the way the bodies were
lying in images shown on the Arabic language television channel,
al-Jazeera, suggested that they were dragged out of their Land Rover and
killed in cold blood.
The two men were named by the Ministry of Defence last night as Sapper
Luke Allsopp, 24, from north London and Staff Sergeant Simon Cullingworth,
36, from Essex, both of 33 EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Engineer
Regiment.
During a joint press conference with George Bush at Camp David, Mr
Blair called the supposed executions acts "of cruelty beyond all human
comprehension".
A British military official at central command in Qatar was less
adamant: "While the footage shown yesterday suggested that they might have
been executed, the pictures are of a poor quality and don't provide us
with the facts."
Mr Bush had supported Mr Blair. "They were murdered, unarmed soldiers
executed. That's a war crime," he said.
Sources said that the fact that the bodies were lying away from their
vehicle without their rifles and helmets suggested they were not killed in
the course of a battle. It is also possible the bodies may have been
pulled away from their vehicle after the men were killed and their rifles
and helmets stolen as trophies.
Yesterday, members of the Duke of Wellington's Regiment expressed their
anger at the reports that colleagues had been "executed". Private Danny
Quirk, 22, from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, said at a checkpoint close
to the spot where the British soldiers went missing: "Now we know we are
fighting a dirty war. If it's true that the British soldiers were executed
in cold blood, we have to accept that we are fighting barbarians."
Iraq's ambassador to Russia, Abbas Khalaf, denied Iraq had executed
American and British prisoners and reiterated that Baghdad would treat
captives in line with the Geneva convention.
