Document:Cruel Britannia - A Secret History of Torture
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Cruel Britannia: a secret history of torture
In 2006, Cpl Donald Payne was the first British soldier to be convicted of a war crime in this country under the International Criminal Court Act 2001. His crime was the inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners held by British Forces in Southern Iraq in September 2003. He received a year in jail and was dismissed from the British Army for his crime. However, whereas a foot soldier who is complicit in torture is sent to jail – as the book reveals, for those higher up the social spectrum a CBE, knighthood or peerage await. Such is the hypocrisy in the British history of torture
If that sounds like an unlikely or extreme thing to say, I can only respond by saying read Cruel Britannia by Ian Cobain. His book is a remarkable narrative.
