‘Witnesses colluded’ against army major who faced eight probes into Iraqi’s drowning, judge says

Robert Campbell was investigated for 17 years over the death of teenager Said Shabram

Iraq British Army
(Image credit: Giles Penfound/British Army via Getty Images)

An army major who has faced eight separate investigations spanning 17 years over the death of an Iraqi teenager has been cleared by a senior judge who concluded that witnesses conspired against the war veteran.

Major Robert Campbell, 47, last night voiced anger over the “witch-hunt” that he has endured, saying: “It finished me, it finished my career.”

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But former Court of Appeal judge Baroness Hallett has concluded that Campbell jumped in to try to save the teen, but then became the victim of a conspiracy which “likely began on the day Shabram died”.

Her Iraq Fatality Investigations (IFI) report says that “a number of civilian witnesses” who came forward to give evidence against Campbell were “inherently unreliable”, and the military was aware witnesses “had colluded and were dishonest” as long ago as 2006.

The findings “raise serious questions over why the major’s ordeal lasted a further 14 years”, says The Telegraph.

The 88-page IFI report concludes that it was “most likely” that Shabram “jumped or fell” into the river while trying to escape what he believed would be “dire punishment for looting” electric cables.

The verdict follows previous investigations by “the Royal Military Police twice, the Army Prosecuting Authority, the Aitken Report inquiry, the Iraq Historic Allegations Team and the director of service prosecutions”, The Times reports.

Campbell said yesterday that he felt “cautiously optimistic that it’s over” - despite, as the paper points out, “having been told that numerous times in the past”.

Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer, a former army officer, has also welcomed the verdict, saying: “I hope these findings will bring some closure and reassurance to the family and veterans involved in this process. Nobody wants to see service personnel or veterans facing extensive reinvestigations into the same incident.”

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Joe Evans is the world news editor at TheWeek.co.uk. He joined the team in 2019 and held roles including deputy news editor and acting news editor before moving into his current position in early 2021. He is a regular panellist on The Week Unwrapped podcast, discussing politics and foreign affairs. 

Before joining The Week, he worked as a freelance journalist covering the UK and Ireland for German newspapers and magazines. A series of features on Brexit and the Irish border got him nominated for the Hostwriter Prize in 2019. Prior to settling down in London, he lived and worked in Cambodia, where he ran communications for a non-governmental organisation and worked as a journalist covering Southeast Asia. He has a master’s degree in journalism from City, University of London, and before that studied English Literature at the University of Manchester.