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American Ambassador John Bolton has been insisting at the United Nations that governments and military forces are not held accountable for terrorist acts. The wording has been reportedly in defense of Israel’s practice of targeting Islamic politicians for assassination and then carrying out the killings with regular army, police or undercover troops.
Ambassador Bolton’s insistence on this point was illustrated on September 19, 2005 by the British Army in Basra, Iraq.
The incident started when two gunmen dressed as Arabs fired on civilians in central Basra and wounded several of them. One of the wounded was a traffic police officer.
The two gunmen ran away but were captured shortly after and were taken in for questioning. The gunmen revealed they were British Marines carrying out a "special security task."
At that point they were apparently taken to a safe house in order to protect them as the police station was becoming the scene of a riotous mob intent on getting at the men.
That is when the British commander, Brigadier John Lorimer apparently began to panic. He stated, "From an early stage I had good reason to believe the lives of the two soldiers were at risk."
He claims that in the short time between becoming aware that the ‘special security task’ had gone awry and the attack he ordered on the police station the UK military went "to exhaustive lengths" to secure the freedom of the soldiers.
Lorimer then ordered an attack on the police station.
When the troops arrived they were attacked with fire-bombs and rockets by the mob intent on destroying the police station themselves.
The British stormed the station after an armored vehicle destroyed the outlying wall.
It was then discovered the two men were not in the jail and were fetched from a neighboring house.
Apparently the British force consisted of more than 10 tanks backed by helicopters.
Video of the incident details dozens of Iraqis surrounding the armored vehicles and throwing gas bombs and rocks at them.
One photograph I saw showed a burning British soldier desperately trying to escape from the hatch of his ‘Warrior’ armored vehicle.
Immediately British Defense Secretary John Reid started trying to muddy the waters, "It became obvious that the police were not doing what we would expect them to do, what was required under the law for them to do, which is to hand over the soldiers to us, and what apparently they were told by their own ministry of the interior to do."
It remains to be seen if anymore ‘special security tasks’ will be ordered by the British High Command. It brings into question the entire practice of ‘special security tasks’. Under the international Geneva Convention military personnel apprehended carrying out military tasks while wearing civilian clothes are considered spies and may be hung by the neck until dead for their crimes.
John Bolton would like to change that.
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