By Andrew Johnson

The Ministry of Defence faces the threat of hundreds of claims for alleged abuse and torture of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers. Lawyers say emerging evidence of abuses, including use of electric shocks, points to a systematic policy of sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation and beatings throughout the occupation of Basra, which must have been authorised by senior officers or politicians and known to hundreds of soldiers. Some 20 Iraqi civilians last week began a fresh round of legal cases claiming human rights abuses against the Ministry of Defence.

Sir William Gage will tomorrow begin his inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa, a recently widowed 26-year-old hotel worker and father of two small children, who was beaten to death by British soldiers while in custody in Iraq in 2003.