Britain’s Prince Harry will not be sent to serve in Iraq after military commanders decided it would be too dangerous, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said on Wednesday.
“I have decided today that Prince Harry will not be deployed to Iraq,” General Sir Richard Dannatt told reporters.
Harry (22), the third in line to the throne and a junior officer in the army, had been due to be deployed to Basra, in southern Iraq, with his Blues and Royals regiment in the coming weeks as part of the latest British troop rotation.
Harry has repeatedly said that he wants to be deployed with his men, but Ministry of Defence officials have expressed concern that he could become a target for Iraqi insurgents, endangering himself and those serving under him.
Prince Harry would be a prime kidnap target for insurgents in Iraq, a commander in the Mehdi Army, the Shi’ite militia loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, told the Guardian in April.
“One of our aims is to capture Harry; we have people inside the British bases to inform us on when he will arrive,” claimed Abu Mujtaba, who commands a unit of about 50 men active in the Mehdi Army in Basra.
In comments denounced by British defence sources as “blatant propaganda”, Abu Mujtaba told the Guardian: “We have a special unit that would work to track him down, with informants inside the bases.
“Not only us, the Mehdi Army, that will try to capture him, but every person who hates the British and the Americans will try to get him, all the mujahedins in Iraq, the al-Qaeda, the Iranians all will try to get him.” — Reuters, Guardian Unlimited Â