May 01, 2007	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 13, 1428

LONDON: A British soldier who had admitted abusing Iraqi civilians was thrown out of the army and jailed for a year on Monday after being convicted as the country's first war criminal.

Corporal Donald Payne, 36, had admitted to inhumane conduct against Iraqi civilians -- one of whom subsequently died -- in the southern city of Basra in 2003. The sentence, handed down by a military court in Wiltshire, southwest England, will also cost him some 300,000 pounds ($600,000) in loss of future earnings and pension rights.

Payne was cleared in February of manslaughter and perverting the course of justice, but pleaded guilty to inhumane conduct, leading to him becoming Britain's first ever convicted war criminal.

Four co-defendants were cleared at that time, while two officers were cleared for failing to ensure troops under their command did not abuse a group of Iraqi civilian detainees. The detainees were arrested by the Queen's Lancashire Regiment at a hotel in Basra, southern Iraq, in September 2003, six months after the US-led invasion. Baha Musa, a 26-year-old hotel worker, suffocated when he was forced to the floor with his arms behind his back as the soldiers tried to cuff him, prosecutors charged last September.

They alleged that the detainees were beaten, hooded, deprived of sleep and made to hold stressful positions over a 36-hour period.--AFP