You can see why Sir Mike Jackson was Tony Blair’s favourite soldier. He looks – even with his manicured eye bags – like a general and he talks like a general. He is politically shrewd; he demanded the opinion on the legality of the Iraq war that has subsequently dogged Lord Goldsmith’s career.

More recently, he did not seek to dodge the army’s accountability for the death of Baha Mousa in its custody, saying it remained ‘a stain’ on its character. He was pretty clear about responsibility: ‘It is bedrock to the British army’s philosophy that a commanding officer is responsible for what goes on within his command.’

The general was giving evidence to the Baha Mousa Inquiry conducted by Sir William Gage. This was established in May 2008; is in the middle of hearings at Finlaison House in the City of London; and expects to report by the end of the year. The inquiry was announced by Des Browne, the then secretary of state for defence, but its real creator was a solicitor, Phil Shiner.

As a profession, we should be profoundly proud of Phil Shiner’s work. He won a historic ruling from the House of Lords in 2007 that detainees in the charge of British armed services, even if outside the UK, have the benefit of the Human Rights Act (Al-Skeini and others v Secretary of State for Defence [2007] UKHL 26). This was described at the time by Des Browne, who had instructed resistance to the claim, as ‘helpful clarification’.

The government decided that a court martial was a suitable response. However, this descended into something close to farce. One defendant, Donald Payne, pleaded guilty. None of the others, including Corporal Payne’s commanding officer, were convicted. The presiding officer, Sir Stuart McKinnon, alluded to a ‘wall of silence’. This prevented any evidence being heard about precisely who was responsible for Mousa’s death. No one wanted to explain how he had received the 93 separate injuries that killed him while in the army’s custody. Corporal Payne, rather bravely, was later to volunteer to the subsequent inquiry that he and his colleagues saw themselves as avenging the previous deaths of British officers. He alleged that his commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Jorge Mendonca, threatened ‘to blow the face off’ an Iraqi prisoner and that he and others acted in accordance with the general culture of those in command. Mendonca was cleared at court martial of all charges relating to the case in 2007 and emphatically denied Payne’s allegations when he appeared before the inquiry in February this year.

As the Baha Mousa Inquiry proceeds, so more gets revealed. Baha Mousa was, as a now accepted issue of fact, kept hooded for 24 of the 36 hours he spent in custody on the advice of an interrogation expert. However, former minister Geoff Hoon, secretary of state for defence at the time of Baha Mousa’s death, expressed surprise that prisoners were being hooded. He was ‘not aware’ that hooding was taking place. Somewhat inexplicably, he did not prepare himself for his inquiry hearing by viewing a celebrated YouTube video, presumably taken by a soldier, that very clearly shows Mousa hooded and being abused. Furthermore, Hoon professed himself unaware ‘of any suggestion that they were hooded in either tactical questioning or interrogation’. His junior minister, Adam Ingram, admitted that he did know that Baha Mousa and others were hooded but had misled parliament in saying that they were not. His evidence to the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights was, he accepted, ‘not accurate’. He had said: ‘I should make it absolutely clear that hooding was only used during the transit of prisoners. It was not used as an interrogation technique’.

We already have three major lessons from the Baha Mousa inquiry. The first is parochial. Barristers get much of the glitz and the glory. Read the history of the law and you learn of the great advocates and commanding judges. But behind every counsel and in every court sat a solicitor. And, just occasionally, the solicitor is the one who has actually done the hard work to set up the case. Solicitor Phil Shiner changed our law.

Second, one of the great achievements of the Human Rights Act has been to lift the stone of secrecy from the actions of the military. Sir Mike Jackson thought the treatment of Baha Mousa ‘totally unacceptable’. It took litigation under the Human Rights Act to bring about that recognition – until then, Mousa’s death was being swept under the carpet.

Finally, we should be clear, as a profession, in our defence of the Human Rights Act. The Guardian’s Afua Hirsch recently revealed that she gets lots of correspondence arguing that ‘human rights are just money-spinners for lawyers’. This case makes the answer to that very clear. There would have been no need for lawyers and litigation if the army’s chain of command had worked and had ensured that Baha Mousa was properly detained. There would have been no need for a judicial inquiry if ministers accountable for the armed forces had similarly been willing to take responsibility. Parliament was powerless to insist on the accountability of the executive. The committee was simply misled. It took judicial review to dispel the obfuscation.

The coalition government appears to have kicked reform of the Human Rights Act into the long grass. This is welcome but not enough. Government ministers, public officials and army officers will continue to be pursued through courts, tribunals and inquiries until they accept without argument that there are international standards to which they can be held to account. Then the need for inquiries like that being held by Sir William Gage will wither away, because ministers and commanding officers will take the kind of responsibility advocated by General Jackson.

Roger Smith is director of the law reform and human rights organisation Justice