… to match the tragedy that is British justice, as news of the worth of an Iraqi life emerges.

They say that justice is blind; in Britain, she is callous with hints of old colonial bigotry.

Which is why Captives, by Ernest Hemingway, seems an apt choice for this Sunday’s poetry corner:

Some came in chains
Unrepentant but tired.
Too tired but to stumble.
Thinking and hating were finished
Thinking and fighting were finished
Retreating and hoping were finished.
Cures thus a long campaign,
Making death easy.

The official line advocates that ‘lessons have been learned.’

For Baha’s family, that lesson has been to the ultimate cost; for the British army, it confirmed that lives in the Middle East come cheap.

Baha died after sustaining 93 injuries while in detention; it takes a dark soul to slide the consequences of such bestial behaviour aside with impunity.