The Government is facing a damaging lawsuit and demands for a public inquiry into its policy on torturing detainees in Iraq after a law lords ruling today.

The UK's top judges ruled that the death of Baha Musa in British military custody in Iraq fell under the remit of the Human Rights Act.

Musa, a hotel receptionist in Basra, died 48 hours after his arrest by British soldiers. He was apparently beaten to death, suffering 93 separate injuries to his body.

The most expensive court martial in British military legal history however failed to find anyone directly responsible for the killing.

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The death of Baha Musa in British military custody was a disgraceful episode for which only one soldier has so far been punished

Michael Evans, Defence Editor

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Today's verdict by the UK's highest appeal court enables Mr Musa's family not only to sue the Government in High Court - lawyers have already said that they will be seeking exemplary damages - but to insist on a public inquiry into his death.

Phil Shiner, a lawyer for the Musa family, reeled off a list of questions he felt should now be answered by the Government.

He asked why it abandoned a ruling by Edward Heath's government in 1972 that outlawed the practice of hooding detainees, and of "stressing" them by depriving them of food and water and bombarding them with noise and abuse.

He also queried whether the right people had been charged with the right offences over Mr Musa's death. He accused the government of suppressing damning evidence from the court martial, including "a video showing hooded and cuffed detaineees being verbally and physically abused as they were man-handled into the UK's preferred stress position".

"When the head of army legal services blew the whistle on hooding and stressing, he was told that the Attorney-General had advised that the Human Rights Act did not apply, and so lower standards were applied," said Mr Shiner.

"It is imperative that the Government and the military face up to these issues."

Speaking outside Parliament after the verdict was read out, Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, the human rights campaign group, said that today's ruling was "incredibly important" as it established the principle that any detainee in British custody anywhere in the world was entitled to the protection of the Human Rights Act.

"Our Law Lords have ensured that there can never be a British Guantanamo Bay anywhere in the world in the future," said Ms Chakrabarti. "There can be no British detention facility where the law does not apply."

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