No charges against UK troops in shooting incident

LONDON, Apr 27 (Reuters) Britain announced today it will not bring murder charges against a group of soldiers for a 2003 shooting incident in Iraq that had caused friction between military and civilian law enforcement.

Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith had infuriated the military by ordering civilian police to look into the killing of a British soldier and an Iraqi civilian, gunned down in a ''friendly fire'' incident in March 2003.

Sergeant Steven Roberts and Zaher Zabti Zaher were shot dead while the soldier was manning a road checkpoint near the town of Al Zubayr at the height of the US-British invasion.

The sergeant's death, one of the earliest of the war, initially caused a public outcry in Britain because it emerged that he was not wearing protective plates in his body armour. He had been ordered to give them to another soldier because of shortages of supplies.

But the details of the incident itself proved at least as controversial as the issue of his body armour.

Military investigators established that Zaher had approached Roberts throwing stones and that other British soldiers, trying to protect him, opened fire.

In the initial shooting they accidentally killed Roberts and wounded Zaher. Soldiers fired again, killing the wounded Iraqi.

Military police investigated whether to bring charges against any of the soldiers for killing Zaher, but Goldsmith decided to turn the affair over to civilian prosecutors, who in turn enlisted London's Metropolitan Police.

That sparked anger in the military at the prospect soldiers could be tried in civilian court for shootings on a battlefield.

SELF-DEFENCE Goldsmith said the case would be dropped because civilian investigators had concluded that evidence ''did not in substance undermine the accounts of the British servicemen'' that they were acting in self defence.

But he defended his decision to pass the case to civilian police, as the only way to avoid the appearance of a cover-up.

''I was concerned that the intervention by the chain of command, and delays in the case, could have led to the defence lawyers raising abuse of process arguments had the soldiers been charged with criminal offences,'' he told the House of Lords.

''An acquittal by a military court, following a successful abuse of process argument by the defence, might have been perceived by some as a final act of the military to cover up any possible wrongdoing by the British soldiers involved in the incident.'' Britain's understaffed military prosecutors and investigators have come in for criticism after a case against seven soldiers accused of killing an Iraqi collapsed last year.

The judge ruled that testimony from Iraqi prosecution witnesses flown to Britain and given large allowances was not reliable because they frequently changed their stories.

A second case, against four British soldiers accused of manslaughter for ordering an Iraqi prisoner to swim across a canal where he drowned, is set to begin next week. A third murder case against seven soldiers is set for later this year.

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