Secret meeting to probe abuse claims at Catterick

MPs are to hold a secret session to uncover the real truth behind allegations of abuse at a second Army base.

Members of the Commons defence committee will hold a meeting behind closed doors later this week to give victims and relatives from Catterick training camp in Yorkshire anonymity to speak about their concerns.

It will follow today's open session, when parents of seven soldiers who died in suspicious circumstances at the Deepcut and Catterick training camps will give evidence to MPs.

Between 1995 and 2002 at Deepcut there were four suspicious deaths of young soldiers. At Catterick, over the same period, there have been at least six suspicious deaths.

"Some of the families do not wish to be in the glare of publicity, so we have arranged a private session for them," said one member of the defence committee.

Relatives of the dead say Catterick is the "new Deepcut" and have demanded a police inquiry along the same lines as that carried out at the Surrey training base.

Lynn Farr, one of the bereaved Catterick parents who will give evidence in public today, told the Standard: "We have written to North Yorkshire police saying we believe the circumstances are similar to the deaths at Deepcut.

"We need to find out what happened to our children."

Mrs Farr's son Daniel, 18, died of pneumonia after a training exercise at the base.

She says it may have been caused by a gas exercise he had been forced to undergo and says Daniel was in pain the weekend before, when he came home on leave, but had refused to report it for fear of repercussions from training staff. Another parent giving evidence, June Sharples, will detail what she says is a catalogue of negligence and incompetence by the Army in investigating her son Allan's death of a gunshot wound while on guard duty at Catterick in

2000.

Mrs Sharples and her daughter Michelle - a police scene-of-crime investigator - say they were horrified at the shoddiness of the Army's response to Allan's death.

Although he had been on guard with another soldier, they say it was 40 minutes before help arrived - by which time it was too late to save him - and vital evidence which might have told how he died was destroyed or contaminated.

New allegations of serious abuse and bullying by recently serving soldiers at Catterick will be made on Channel 4's Dispatches programme tomorrow night.