Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News Staff

BAGHDAD, 5 January 2004 — British Prime Minister Tony Blair paid a surprise visit to Iraq’s second city of Basra yesterday and told the British troops keeping the peace there that world security was threatened by the “virus of Islamic extremism” and “brutal and repressive states which are developing weapons that can cause destruction on a massive scale.”

This was Blair’s second visit to Iraq since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April and follows a high-profile and secretive trip by US President George W. Bush in November, when he joined troops to celebrate the US Thanksgiving holiday.

Blair urged soldiers to concentrate on winning the peace in a country riven by a relentless insurgency against occupying forces, saying that would ensure a stable future.

“Part of the pride people feel in you is the knowledge that in years to come people in this country... will look back on what you’ve done and... recognize that they owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude,” Blair said.

As Blair spoke, a British newspaper reported that a young Iraqi man arrested by British troops in Basra died in custody after a severe beating. The paper cited fellow prisoners, documents and the man’s family in its report.

Baha Mousa, the son of an Iraqi police colonel, was tied up and had a hood placed over his head before he and other detainees were repeatedly kicked and punched, the Independent on Sunday said.

The newspaper added that while an official British Army death certificate said Mousa died from asphyxia, other classified documents reported injuries to another prisoner “due to a severe beating”.

Mousa’s father told the paper that Baha was arrested in September last year at a Basra hotel after weapons were discovered there, and that his badly bruised body was handed to them three days later.

One of the dead man’s fellow prisoners was quoted in the report as saying that he, Mousa and six other men were repeatedly punched and kicked.

“They set on Baha especially, and he kept crying that he couldn’t breathe in the hood,” said the man, who asked not to be identified.

“He kept asking them to take the bag off and said that he was suffocating. But they laughed at him and kicked more.”

Meanwhile, an Iraqi police lieutenant said yesterday that five policemen were wounded when US soldiers fired back at insurgents who had ambushed them with a rocket-propelled grenade north of Baghdad.

The policemen were hospitalized in Bohruz, just south of Baquba, said Lt. Mohammad Ibrahim.

— Additional input from agencies