A British soldier in Iraq was shot dead by "friendly fire" three days after he had been ordered to hand back life-saving body armour, an inquest was told yesterday. Sgt Steven Roberts, 33, was killed at a checkpoint outside the town of Az Zubayr in 2003. An Army Board of Inquiry report found that if he had not given up his enhanced body armour the bullet would not have killed him.Yesterday's inquest heard that the sergeant and other soldiers in his tank group had accepted the body armour order because they had been told "guys on the ground needed it more than us".
The death of Sgt Roberts, of 2 Royal Tank Regiment, in such circumstances led to an outcry and calls for Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary at the time, to be sacked. Samantha Roberts, the dead man's widow, campaigned to find out the truth about his death and called for an apology from Mr Hoon for the "unfillable void" it left in her life. Before yesterday's hearing in Oxford, she said: "I'm just going to go with an open mind and see what happens."