It's about bloody time...

In 2003, shortly after the end of the Second Gulf War, six RMP Non-Commissioned Officers were murdered in Iraq, at a place called Majar al-Kabir, which is in southern Iraq, to the north of Basrah, following a riot and the subsequent protracted fire-fight and siege of an Iraqi Police Sub-Station.

Here's the BBC News article from today... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8513049.stm

I spent near to seven and a half years in the T.A. as a Military Policeman, having joined in 1990, and leaving in 1997. It was by the Grace of God that no-one I knew was involved in the 2003 incident - they could so easily have been, however. The Corps, however, is a fairly small place, with at least one or two people in every Company knowing someone from each of the other Companies - it's only a Corps of about 1,700 or so, after all, which has to police the entire British Army - that's a lot less per head of population than the Metropolitan Police uses for London, for example. The murders of six of our number in such a horrendous manner shocked us all to the core. The effects are, to some degree, still being felt by many in the Corps and it's families.

Forget the freedom of civilians to say a war may be right of wrong, if you're a soldier, you go where the Army sends you, as you very well know. And that's precisely what the Soldiers of the British Army, both Regular and Reservist did before, during, and after, the 2003 Second Gulf War that unseated Saddam Hussein. They still are seven years on, in both Iraq, and now Afghanistan.

The families of the murdered NCOs deserve, and the Corps of Royal Military Police needs, full and final satisfactory closure to this appalling incident.

It's taken the Iraqi authorities seven long and bitter years to get to this point.

I therefore sincerely hope that the Investigating Judge in Iraq keeps to his decision that there is enough evidence to justify a trial, and that the evidence collected points to guilty verdicts on the accused.