TONY BLAIR put pressure on officials over a case of British soldiers accused of beating an Iraqi man in their custody to death, newly released files showed today.

The former Labour PM insisted that their trial over the high-profile September 2023 death of Baha Mousa must not take place in civil courts.

Antony Phillipson, the then prime minister’s private secretary for foreign affairs, wrote to Blair in July 2005 to tell him the case would likely proceed to a court martial.

His note added: “Although if the AG (attorney general) felt that the case were better dealt with in a civil court he could direct accordingly.”

But Blair wrote “It must not!” on top of this paragraph in the files released to the National Archives at Kew, west London.

Corporal Donald Payne was later convicted of inhumane treatment after admitting to brutally mistreating Mousa and other civilians at a detention centre in Basra in September 2003.

He was jailed for a year and dismissed from the army, becoming the first British soldier to be convicted of a war crime.

Stop The War Coalition convener Lindsey German called it “one of the many crimes of Tony Blair over Iraq.”

She also said of Blair’s armed forces minister, Adam Ingram, being knighted in the New Year Honours list that it was “war criminals rewarding war criminals.”

Mr Ingram admitted at the public inquiry into the death of Mr Mousa in June 2010 that he had misled MPs over British troops’ hooding of Iraqi prisoners.

He was knighted in the 2026 New Year Honours for “parliamentary and political service.”