A British soldier has become the first to admit war crimes in Iraq, pleading guilty to abusing Iraqi civilians until they became a “choir” of pain.

A court martial found Corporal Donald Payne, 35, guilty of beating Iraqi detainees in British custody with iron bars and starving them.

“We are dealing with systematic abuse against prisoners involving unacceptable violence against persons who were detained in custody, hooded and cuffed and wholly unable to protect themselves over a very long period of time,” Julian Bevan QC, for the prosecution, told the court.

Payne is one of seven troopers facing court martial over the death of an Iraqi hotel receptionist, Baha Musa, in the southern city of Basra. Musa was arrested along with other detainees by a British patrol six months after the Anglo- American invasion of Iraq in 2003.