A former Labour defence minister was forced to admit yesterday that he misled MPs when he denied that British soldiers had hooded Iraqi detainees during interrogations.
Adam Ingram, the ex-armed forces minister, denied in a Parliamentary answer that UK forces hooded detainees as an interrogation technique despite seeing a document suggesting they did, a public inquiry in London heard.
The inquiry is investigating the beating to death by British soldiers of Baha Mousa, 26, a hotel receptionist, in Basra, southern Iraq, in September 2003. During his interrogation by British soldiers, Mr Mousa and other Iraqi civilians held with him were unlawfully hooded.
Now it has emerged that Mr Ingram was copied in on a memo revealing that the Iraqi was hooded for a total of nearly 24 hours during 36 hours spent in UK military custody before he died.
Nine months after the Iraqi's death, Mr Ingram assured the then-Labour MP Jean Corston, the chair of the Parliamentary joint committee on human rights, that hooding was only used while detainees were being transported for security reasons.