Army Laptops Thrown into the English Channel
May 1, 2009
An Army officer, Captain James Rands revealed to the London High Court that he had thrown overboard a couple of Army laptops that contained the military images of twenty dead Iraqis. He admitted of throwing overboard one laptop in 2006 and the other in the summer of the year 2007.
Capt Rand revealed this information as he was being cross-examined in a case where an accusation prevailed on the British Army of murdering twenty civilians of Iraq after torturing them. He said that he had went through with the bizarre act, for his personal notebook was not meant to hold any Army documents. He however denied them containing any image of the Iraqi civilians.
Capt Rands served the post of the intelligence officer with the Princess of Wales’s Regiment’s 1st battalion based at camp Abu Naji that is a base in suthern Iraq. Abu Naji was the place where the alleged homicides took place suspectedly during interrogations conducted in May 2004.
Capt Rands however admitted that he had captured the images of the dead prisoners for the identification purposes, particularly due to the unavailability of a suitable Army camera at the time. He added that after capturing the pictures he had downloaded them to his personal computer.
Amidst the hearing at the instance of a question shot at the captain that if he had fabricated the laptop throwing overboard story with a view to saving the memory of the laptop from being inspected, he answered negative. The hearing is carrying on.
