Report claims abuse of Iraqi prisoners limited

Last Modified: 25 Jan 2008
By: Jon Snow, Kylie Morris

Snowmail: So although Iraqis were abused by British forces in 2003 and 2004 the practice was not "systemic".

However, it has now emerged that the five abusive techniques used by the British in Northern Ireland and banned by Prime Minister Ted Heath in 1972 have been in use in the present operations in Iraq - sensory deprivation, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation and being made to stand for inordinately long hours.

The reassurances that all is well and that the army will now abide by a new code of practice will be something we will look at at seven.

Holes being blocked in Gaza wall ========================

The scenes in Gaza tonight are amazing. The Americans seem to have told the Egyptians that they want the people from Gaza pushed back into the territory and have started to block up the holes in the iron wall that seperate Egypt and Gaza at Rafah.

Trouble is as they block one bit another bit opens and there are thought to be 700,000 Palestinians who have crossed over. Jonathan Miller is on the case.

Karzai verbally attacks British =====================

We are live in Afghanistan tonight after Afghan president, Karzai, condemned the British and Americans, but the British in particular, for allowing the Taliban to regroup again after the initial victory in 2003.

It's an intriguing development and we will be hearing from Alex Thomson in Helmand, and from Davos where President Karzai has been meeting Gordon Brown.

Our correspondent Faisal Islam is there and we shall also have more on the rogue trader and the world economy.

Light at the end of tunnel for Welsh miners ================================

Finally Darshna Soni is at Tower Colliery in Wales reopened 10 years ago and finally closed today because they have worked the seam out. But not all is lost they are off to open a smaller one down the road. Got to run not down that road but to talk to our man in Afghanistan.

Jon Snow

On More 4 News tonight:

The difficult subject of female genital mutilations. The largely African practice is illegal in Britain, with a possible 14 year sentence for practitioners. According to department of health funded research, at least 20,000 young girls in Britain are at serious risk of it.

And yet there are no national statistics kept on the scale of the problem; there have been no prosecutions; and there's not even any evidence that a single girl has even been checked for it.

Many social workers we've spoken to complain of a conspiracy of silence on the issue - fuelled, they say, by a misplaced sense of political correctness and cultural relativism.

We'll have a special - and disturbing - report this evening.

Kylie Morris