The Basra prison incident was an event involving British troops in Basra, Iraq.
On 19 September 2005, two undercover British Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers dressed in traditional Arab garments and headdresses opened fire on a group of Iraqi Police officers after having been stopped at a roadblock. Two Iraqi police officers were shot, at least one of whom died. [1] The two soldiers were arrested and taken to the Al Jameat Police Station. [2]
The two SAS operators were part of Operation Hathor whose objective was keeping an Iraqi Police officer (who ran a crime unit with rumoured links to corruption and brutality in the city) under surveillance. Tension was already high between the Iraqi Police and British forces and when an Iraqi policeman tried to pull the operators from their vehicle at the roadblock, they opened fire, killing two of the policemen. The SAS men drove off with Iraqi Police in pursuit, but feeling they could not outrun them they decided to stop and talk their way out of it. The Iraqi police beat and arrested them. [3]
In response, twenty members of A Squadron 22nd SAS Regiment and a platoon of paratroopers from the Special Forces Support Group (SFSG) flew from Baghdad to Basra. Other SAS operators tracked down their two colleagues to Al Jameat Police Station and then withdrew and called in Hathor's QRF (Quick Reaction Force) in Basra, whilst a MQ-1 Predator drone and Lynx helicopter fed the UK JOC a live feed on the prison. [4]
Members of The 1st Battalion The Staffordshire Regiment formed a cordon outside the police station whilst an SAS raid was organised.
British tanks and infantry encircled the jail where the men (whose photographs had been widely circulated but whose names had not been made public) were being held. A crowd gathered and began throwing stones and molotov cocktails at the Warrior infantry fighting vehicles, setting at least one ablaze. Three British soldiers were injured and, according to some reports, two demonstrators were killed. A letter of ultimatum was taken to the prison by two officers from 12th Brigade HQ who were themselves taken hostage whilst the SAS soldiers were bundled into the boot of a car and taken to a safe house in Basra. [1] [5]
Footage from the Lynx helicopter showed that the two SAS prisoners had been moved to a house not far from the prison and the British feared that they would be executed by Iraqi Hezbollah. Because of this, the rescue plan was altered so that a few members of A Squadron would assault the prison with regular army personnel and vehicles while the main SAS ground force assaulted the house. After nightfall, around 9pm, the British Army stormed the prison and house where the SAS men were being held. The SAS assault on the house met no resistance; they found the two prisoners in a locked room. [6]
According to the Governor of the Basra Governorate, Mohammed al-Waili, the British had used "more than ten tanks backed by helicopters" to carry out the raid. The assault on the prison was spearheaded by Warrior IFV's and Challenger 2 tanks breaking down the walls and destroying cars and flimsy buildings. [6] Eyewitness reports claimed that the assault allowed 150 prisoners to flee the prison. [1] [7]
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) initially denied storming the prison. [8] In later statements, it said that the soldiers would have likely been killed, and that the police force had been infiltrated by illegal militia groups. [9]
Muhammad al-Waili denounced the event as "barbaric, savage and irresponsible".
As part of Operation Sinbad, on 25 December 2006, British troops from The 1st Battalion The Staffordshire Regiment raided the Al Jameat Police Station, killing seven gunmen and freeing 127 prisoners being held by Shia militias there. They then blew up the building. [10] A British Army spokesperson stated that the 127 prisoners freed had been tortured and that there were fears that they were about to be executed. [11]
The Iranian Embassy siege took place from 30 April to 5 May 1980, after a group of six armed men stormed the Iranian embassy on Prince's Gate in South Kensington, London. The gunmen, Iranian Arabs campaigning for sovereignty of Khuzestan Province, took 26 people hostage, including embassy staff, several visitors, and a police officer who had been guarding the embassy. They demanded the release of prisoners in Khuzestan and their own safe passage out of the United Kingdom. The British government quickly decided that safe passage would not be granted and a siege ensued. Subsequently, police negotiators secured the release of five hostages in exchange for minor concessions, such as the broadcasting of the hostage-takers' demands on British television.
Lieutenant General Abid Al-Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti was an Iraqi military officer and Saddam Hussein's personal secretary.
The Battle of Abu Ghraib took place between Iraqi Mujahideen and United States forces at Abu Ghraib prison on April 2, 2005.
The Christian Peacemaker hostage crisis involved four human rights workers of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) who were held hostage in Iraq from November 26, 2005 by the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. One hostage, Tom Fox, was killed, and the remaining three freed in a military operation on March 23, 2006.
The following lists events that happened during 2006 in Iraq.
The Special Forces Support Group (SFSG) is a special forces unit of the British Armed Forces. The SFSG was formed officially on 3 April 2006 to provide support to the Special Air Service, the Special Boat Service and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment on operations. It is a tri-service unit, composed of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment,, a company of Royal Marine Commandos, and a flight (platoon) from the Royal Air Force Regiment.
Operation Together Forward, also known as Forward Together, was an unsuccessful offensive against sectarian militias in Baghdad to significantly reduce the violence in which had seen a sharp uprise since the mid-February 2006 bombing of the Askariya Mosque, a major Shiite Muslim shrine, in Samarra.
Operation Sinbad was an operation led by the Iraqi Security Forces and supported by British, Danish and other Multi-National Forces in southern Iraq. The operation began during the early hours of 27 September 2006. The stated goal of the operation was to root out corrupt police as well as offer assistance to the residents of the area in rebuilding. An estimated 2,300 Iraqi army troops and 1,000 British soldiers took part in the operations with another 2,000 in close proximity, in preparation for handing over security of the city of Basra to the Iraqi government.
The history of the British Army's Special Air Service (SAS) regiment of the British Army begins with its formation during the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War, and continues to the present day. It includes its early operations in North Africa, the Greek Islands, and the Invasion of Italy. The Special Air Service then returned to the United Kingdom and was formed into a brigade with two British, two French and one Belgian regiment, and went on to conduct operations in France, Italy again, the Low Countries and finally into Germany.
Operation Saber Guardian was a joint operation between 3rd Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 5th Iraqi Army soldiers, local concerned citizens, and 6-9 Armored Reconnaissance Squadron, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. The operation, targeted at al-Qaida leadership near the town of Sherween, Iraq, resulted in 20 al-Qaida terrorists killed, 20 detained, and two weapons caches and 12 improvised explosive devices discovered.
The Battle of Basra lasted from 21 March to 6 April 2003 and was one of the first battles of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The British 7 Armoured Brigade fought their way into Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, on 6 April coming under constant attack by the Iraqi Army 51st Division and Fedayeen Saddam, while elements of the Parachute Regiment cleared the 'old quarter' of the city that was inaccessible to vehicles. Entering Basra had only been achieved after two weeks of conflict, which included the biggest tank battle of the war by British forces when the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards destroyed 14 abandoned Iraqi tanks on the 27 March.
The 2008 Nineveh campaign was a series of offensives and counter-attacks between insurgent and Coalition forces for control of the Nineveh Governorate in northern Iraq in early-to-mid-2008. Some fighting also occurred in the neighboring Kirkuk Governorate.
Sergeant Jonathan Stuart Hollingsworth was a British Army soldier. Described as "an SAS hero" by a British tabloid newspaper, he reportedly sustained gunshot wounds during a raid to capture terror leaders in Basra and later died of his injuries at a nearby military hospital.
The siege of Sadr City was a blockade of the Shi'a district of northeastern Baghdad carried out by US and Iraqi government forces in an attempt to destroy the main power base of the insurgent Mahdi Army in Baghdad. The siege began on 4 April 2004 – later dubbed "Black Sunday" – with an uprising against the Coalition Provisional Authority following the government banning of a newspaper published by Muqtada Al-Sadr's Sadrist Movement. The most intense periods of fighting in Sadr City occurred during the first uprising in April 2004, the second in August the same year, during the sectarian conflict that gripped Baghdad in late 2006, during the Iraq War troop surge of 2007, and during the spring fighting of 2008.
The Joint Special Operations Command Task Force which fought in the Iraq War was a joint U.S. and British special operations temporary grouping assembled from different units. It has been described as a "hunter-killer team" with its core made up of the United States Army's 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta and the 75th Ranger Regiment, as well as the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group and members of the United States Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron, all under Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and elements from the United Kingdom Special Forces, including the Special Air Service, Special Boat Service (SBS), Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), 18 (UKSF) Signal Regiment and the Special Forces Support Group (SFSG). The task force was reported to be responsible for the cross border raid into Syria from Iraq in October 2008 that resulted in eight deaths including Abu Ghadiya, along with several US operations in the Horn of Africa targeting al-Qaeda.
Qais Hadi Sayed Hasan al-Khazali is an Iraqi politician and militant leader who is the founder and Secretary-General of the Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, an Iraqi Shi'ite paramilitary organization and political party. He is best known as the founder and leader of the Iran-backed Special Groups in Iraq from June 2006 until his capture by British forces in March 2007. As head of the Special Groups, Khazali directed arms shipment, formation of squads to participate in fighting, and insurgent operations, most notably the 20 January 2007 attack on American forces in Karbala. A former follower of Muqtada al-Sadr, he was expelled from the Mahdi Army in 2004 for giving "unauthorized orders" and founded his own group: Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH) also known as the "Khazali Network" that was later designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. Department of State. During his incarceration, Akram al-Kaabi became acting commander of the organization until his release in January 2010.
Operation Marlborough was the code name of a mission carried out by M Squadron Special Boat Service. The mission involved an SBS team from Task Force Black, in Baghdad, Iraq, on 23 July 2005 with support from the Special Air Service and U.S. military assets.
Operation Larchwood 4 was an operation launched by B squadron of the British 22nd Special Air Service Regiment supported by US forces to attack an Al-Qaeda-occupied farmhouse in Yusufiyah, Baghdad Governorate, Iraq. The raid was a major success, as a result of which intelligence was gathered which led to the finding and killing of Al Qaeda in Iraq's leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi a few months later.