The British government is to pay nearly 3 million pounds (5.9 million dollars) in compensation to the family of an Iraqi civilian beaten to death by troops in Basra and nine other men who suffered maltreatment by British forces, solicitors said Thursday, reported dpa.
The pay-out of 2.83 million pounds had been agreed during two days of "intensive negotiations" between the group and the Ministry of Defence in London, law firm Leigh Day & Co said.
The money will be shared between the relatives of Baha Mousa, a 26-year-old hotel receptionist who died from the injuries sustained in a raid by British forces on a Basra hotel in September, 2003.
He and the other Iraqi men were arrested at a hotel where weapons and suspected bomb-making equipment were found. Mousa was detained under suspicion of being an insurgent.
Legal representatives of Mousa's family and others in the group had threatened to take civil action before the High Court in London after a court martial earlier this year ended in the acquittal of six of the seven accused.
Last March, the ministry in London admitted breaching the human rights of the abused Iraqis when defence secretary Des Browne spoke of "substantive breaches" of parts of the European Convention on Human Rights which protected the right to life and prohibited torture.
Seven members of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment (QLR) faced a court martial over the case, but six were acquitted and only one admitted treating the Iraqis "inhumanely."
Corporal Donald Payne was jailed for a year and dismissed from the army. dpa at sc