A postmortem picture of Baha Mousa, released by his family's solicitor
Behind today's announcement is the human tragedy of the torture and killing of Baha Mousa while in detention with UK soldiers in Basra. But behind that particular tragedy are more tragic events. In the same incident, another Iraqi was tortured so badly he nearly died. Another nine Iraqis in this incident were badly abused.
But it gets worse. These men were kept hooded, forced into painful stress positions, and deprived of food, water and sleep. We know from the court martial into the death of Baha Mousa that it was standard operating procedure to hood and stress Iraqis in detention, that our interrogators were trained to do so and that it was done to prolong the shock of capture so that the intelligence gained might be better. This was not an isolated incident. It would appear that stressing and hooding were done as a matter of policy.
All of this - and more - was done in our name. There will be many people hearing this - including in the military - who will be as shocked as we are. How could these things have happened while the UK was responsible for the administration of south-east Iraq?
We went into Iraq in the name of the rule of law and democracy. We stand for decent values and we respect human rights. None of what I have said is consistent with any of these principles. We must act together to eradicate those factors that led to this disgrace to our nation. We must ensure that lessons are learned so that these things can never happen again. In future conflicts, our troops must be properly equipped and that requirement includes appropriate training on the legal standards that must at all times be observed. We should put to one side what the US may or may not have done while we concentrate on removing forever the stain on this country's moral character.