 |
| Battle of Danny Boy | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Iraq War | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 United Kingdom |  Mahdi Army | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| ~100 | |||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| Some wounded. [1] | 28 confirmed killed. [1] | ||||||
The Battle of Danny Boy took place close to the city of Amarah in Southern Iraq on 14 May 2004, between British soldiers and about 100 Iraqi insurgents of the Mahdi Army. The battle is named after a local British checkpoint called Danny Boy. [2]
The Mahdi Army insurgents ambushed a patrol of Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders close to a checkpoint known as Danny Boy near Majar al-Kabir. [1] The Argylls called in reinforcements from the 1st Battalion of the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment; the latter were also ambushed and due to an electronic communications failure it was some time before further British relief arrived. While waiting for reinforcements the British were involved in one of the fiercest engagements they fought in Iraq. The fighting involved close-quarter rifle fire and bayonets. [3] [2] The battle lasted for about three hours during which 28 Mahdi Army insurgents were killed; the British suffered some wounded, but none were killed in the action. [1]
Sergeant Brian Wood, of the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment was awarded the Military Cross for his part in the battle. [2]
On 25 November 2009, Bob Ainsworth, then the British Minister of State for the Armed Forces, announced that retired High Court judge Sir Thayne Forbes would chair the Al-Sweady Inquiry. It was alleged that 20 Iraqis, taken prisoner during the battle, were murdered and that others were tortured. The British Ministry of Defence denied that the 20 were captured, stating that 20 bodies were removed from the battlefield for identification and then returned to their families; a further nine were taken prisoner and held for questioning but were not mistreated. [4] [5] In March 2013, Christopher Stanley of the UK-based Rights Watch group said that MoD was trying to get away with grave human rights violations – including killing – without punishment or due process of law.[ citation needed ] On 4 March 2013 the hearings of the Al-Sweady Public Inquiry opened in London. [6] On 20 March 2014 Public Interest Lawyers, a British law firm acting for the families of the dead Iraqis, announced that they were withdrawing the allegations against British soldiers. [7] They accepted that there was no evidence that the Iraqis had been alive when taken into the British compound. [7]
On 17 December 2014 the inquiry, which cost nearly £25 million, returned its findings. [8] It found that no prisoners had been murdered, nor that their bodies had been mutilated and that the evidence to that effect from the detainees was deliberately untruthful. However, the inquiry did find that British soldiers mistreated nine Iraqi prisoners, but not deliberately. It stated that the ill-treatment was much milder than the initial accusations of torture, mutilation and murder. Sir Thayne said that the "most serious allegations" which "have been hanging over [the British] soldiers for the past 10 years" have been found to be "without foundation". [9] The inquiry found that the allegations made by the Iraqis and their lawyers were based on "deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hostility". As a result of the inquiry's findings Public Interest Lawyers and Leigh Day, another firm involved in cases against British troops, were referred to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority. In August 2016, Public Interest Lawyers went out of business, while the British government announced it would take steps to prevent further spurious claims against troops. [10] In December 2016, Professor Phil Shiner, head of Public Interest Lawyers, admitted guilt in relation to claims of wrongdoing by British troops in the context of professional misconduct proceedings. He was struck off the roll of solicitors by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in February 2017.
The battle and its aftermath are depicted in the 2021 BBC Two drama Danny Boy , starring Anthony Boyle and Toby Jones. [11]
Events in the year 2004 in Iraq.
The Mahdi Army was an Iraqi Shia militia created by Muqtada al-Sadr in June 2003 and disbanded in 2008.
Amarah, also spelled Amara, is a city in south-eastern Iraq, located on a low ridge next to the Tigris River waterway south of Baghdad about 50 km from the border with Iran. It lies at the northern tip of the marshlands between the Tigris and Euphrates.
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq was completed and the regime of Saddam Hussein was toppled in May 2003, an Iraqi insurgency began that would last until the United States left in 2011. The 2003–2006 phase of the Iraqi insurgency lasted until early 2006, when it escalated from an insurgency to a Sunni-Shia civil war, which became the most violent phase of the Iraq War.
Events in the year 2005 in Iraq.
The Iraq War, also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a prolonged conflict in Iraq lasting from 2003 to 2011. It began with the invasion by a United States-led coalition, which resulted in the overthrow of the Ba'athist government of Saddam Hussein. The conflict persisted as an insurgency arose against coalition forces and the newly established Iraqi government. US forces were officially withdrawn in 2011. In 2014, the US became re-engaged in Iraq, leading a new coalition under Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, as the conflict evolved into the ongoing insurgency.
Baha Mousa was an Iraqi man who died while in British Army custody in Basra, Iraq in September 2003. The inquiry into his death found that Mousa's death was caused by "factors including lack of food and water, heat, exhaustion, fear, previous injuries and the hooding and stress positions used by British troops - and a final struggle with his guards". The inquiry heard that Mousa was hooded for almost 24 hours during his 36 hours of custody by the 1st Battalion of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment and that he suffered at least 93 injuries before his death. The report later details that Mousa was subject to several practices banned under both domestic law and the Geneva Conventions. Seven British soldiers were charged in connection with the case. Six were found not guilty. Corporal Donald Payne pleaded guilty to inhumane treatment of a prisoner and was jailed for a year and dismissed from the Army. On 19 September 2006 with his guilty plea to inhumane treatment of Mousa, Payne became the first British soldier to admit to a war crime.
The 2004 Iraq spring fighting was a series of operational offensives and various major engagements during the Iraq War. It was a turning point in the war; the spring fighting marked the entrance into the conflict of militias and religiously based militant Iraqi groups, such as the Shi'a Mahdi Army.
The siege of Basra was initiated by the Mahdi Army to capture the city of Basra in 2007. Following the reported major failure of the coalition forces, whose purpose was to stabilise Basra and prepare it for the turning over of security to Iraqi government forces, the city was overrun by insurgent forces from three different Iraqi factions including the Mahdi Army, and the British found themselves under major siege in their bases and capable of conducting only limited defence action in armoured convoys.
The Battle of Basra began on 25 March 2008, when the Iraqi Army launched an operation to drive the Mahdi Army militia out of the southern Iraqi city of Basra. The operation was the first major operation to be planned and carried out by the Iraqi Army since the invasion of 2003.
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.
Martyn Day is a British solicitor specializing in international, environmental and product liability claims who founded – and is the Senior Partner of – the law firm Leigh Day, established in 1987. He was a director of Greenpeace Environmental Trust, having stepped down as chairman of Greenpeace UK in 2008.
The Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) was a unit set up by the British government in March 2010 to investigate allegations of abuse and torture by British soldiers in Iraq. Many of these focused on three interrogation sites near Basra operated by the Joint Forward Interrogation Team (JFIT) between March 2003 and December 2008. The inquiry was established in November 2010 after 146 Iraqi men falsely claimed they had been tortured. IHAT was closed down on 30 June 2017; the only prosecution that resulted from its existence was that of Phil Shiner, the disgraced former lawyer who had made most of the allegations and was convicted of fraud on 30 September 2024.
The Al-Sweady Inquiry was a five-year public inquiry led by Thayne Forbes which investigated accusations of mistreatment of prisoners by the British Army following the Battle of Danny Boy. The enquiry commenced its investigations in 2009.
Sir John Thayne Forbes is a British retired judge and barrister. As a High Court judge, he presided over the trial of Harold Shipman who was convicted of 15 murders in 2000 and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment. Shipman is now recognised as one of the most prolific serial killers in history. He led the Al-Sweady Inquiry, a five-year public enquiry that reported in 2014.
The fall of Mosul in Iraq occurred between 4 and 10 June 2014, when Islamic State (IS) insurgents, initially led by Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, captured Mosul from the Iraqi Army, led by Lieutenant General Mahdi Al-Gharrawi.
Philip Joseph Shiner is a British former human rights solicitor and convicted criminal. He was struck off the roll of solicitors in England and Wales in 2017 over misconduct relating to false abuse claims against British troops. He was Head of Strategic Litigation at Public Interest Lawyers (International) from 2014 until the firm's closure on 31 August 2016. He had previously been Principal at Public Interest Lawyers Ltd from 1999 to 2014.
The Battle of Majar al-Kabir was the result of growing distrust between the British military and local inhabitants of south-eastern Iraq over house searches and confiscation of personal weapons that locals felt were crucial for their self-protection. Despite a signed agreement between local people and British forces stating that the British would not enter the town, the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment started patrolling in the town of Majar al-Kabir on 24 June 2003, the day after the agreement was signed. The British thought the agreement was to stop the weapons searches that involved going into the houses of local inhabitants.
Brian Wood is a former soldier in the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment who was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in the Battle of Danny Boy.
Danny Boy is a 2021 British biographical drama television film directed by Sam Miller. It details parts of the life of war veteran Brian Wood.
