Declining
to comment on why two armed British nationals disguised as Iraqis would
be in Basra, the Ministry of Defence told Aljazeera.net it didn't
matter if both men were out of uniform with no identification.
"Iraqi law requires any coalition force members to be
handed back - once it was established they were foreign soldiers,
they should have been handed over.
"There was even an order from the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior that both men should have been released," the spokesman added.
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Two British military vehicles were
torched in Basra on Monday |
Asked
whether the raid suggested that using force in Iraq to achieve an
objective was acceptable, the defence official said the "vast majority
of Iraqis in Basra are law-abiding".
"We were dealing with a small group of between 200
and 300 people. Naturally, the brigadier [John Lorimer] fully
considered the consequences of what he was doing."
Lorimer, the UK's top military official in Basra,
said in a media statement that "his concern for the arrested men
increased after he received information they had been handed over to
militia elements".
Eventual rescue
And a second defence official said that although the raid - which appears to have devastated the police station - had been unsuccessful, it allowed troops to obtain accurate intelligence as to where the two men would be found.
"Unfortunately they weren't released and we became
concerned for their safety. As a result a Warrior infantry fighting
vehicle broke down the perimeter wall in one place.
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Both British agents were rescued
from a house in Basra |
"Our
guys went in there and searched it from top to bottom in order to go
and recover our two soldiers who had been detained," he said.
The
two undercover agents were later rescued from a house in Basra. The
operation followed a shooting incident and riots in which two British
armoured vehicles were torched as their crews fled for safety in the
southern Iraqi city of Basra.
British Defence
Secretary John Reid said the soldiers seen emerging from a burning tank
under mob attack suffered only minor injuries - despite violent scenes
that stunned British newspapers.
No Iraqi Foreign Ministry spokesman contacted by Aljazeera.net was prepared to comment on the prison raid.
But an Iraqi member of parliament, Ali Dabagh, said
the Shia militiamen from the Mahdi Army had attempted to take the
British soldiers hostage to exchange them for two militia leaders
arrested on Sunday by British forces.
London-based independent defence analyst Paul Beaver
said the problem appeared to have been caused by a British intelligence
operation to infiltrate insurgent forces going wrong.