THE grieving mother of a soldier murdered in Iraq has launched a legal bid to force the Ministry of Defence to hold a fresh inquiry into his death.

Corporal Paul Long, 24, was one of six Red Caps who were training local police officers in the town of Majar al-Kabir in June 2003 when the station was attacked by a mob of 300 civilians.

A series of investigations into what went wrong have taken place, including an internal Army Board of Inquiry and an inquest, yet last August the families were given the devastating news by the Ministry of Defence that nothing more could be done to deliver answers.

However, in a dramatic twist, the European Convention on Human Rights is now being cited by a top lawyer, giving renewed hope to the families, which also includes relatives of Cpl Simon Miller, of Washington, Tyne and Wear.

“We’ve enlisted Paul Shiner and he’s a top man who has won cases against the MoD so we’re very hopeful,” said Cpl Long’s mother Pat, of Hebburn, South Tyneside. “I have said all along that I will never give up until I get answers.

“What we are basically doing is writing to the MoD informing them that we intend to take them to the High Court and demand a new investigation and using the European Court of Human Rights to do that.”

Mr Shiner, from Birmingham-based Public Interest Lawyers, yesterday sent a 25-page letter to Defence Secretary Philip Hammond outlining calls for a fresh inquiry, while warning they could bring a judicial review challenge in the High Court.

The letter states: “At present, Mrs Long feels a strong sense of injustice, that the questions she has about her son’s death have not been properly answered and that, importantly, the lack of any accountability for the situation in which her son was placed does not do justice for her son.

“The circumstances of the deaths in this case reveal obvious defects in the systems which ought reasonably be expected to be in place to protect the lives of British soldiers.”