Blair Accused Of War Crimes Charges Before ICC
LONDON, March 2 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A British
anti-Iraq war group said Tuesday, March 2, it wants the International
Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to consider whether Prime Minister
Tony Blair officials should be tried for war crimes amid a political
furor that the British attorney general was forced to rewrite his
legal advice before the Iraq invasion.
Submitting a petition to the court, the Legal Action Against War said
it was also asking the court to look into similar alleged offences by
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon and
Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, British daily The Guardian reported.
It said "a principal charge" against the four men was "intentionally
launching an attack knowing that it will cause incidental loss of life
or injury to civilians".
The group said "a principal charge" was "intentionally launching an
attack knowing that it will cause incidental loss of life or injury to
civilians".
At a press conference in London, the anti-war group hit out at "the
genocidal blockade and inhuman attacks on Iraq", the British daily
said.
The petition came just two days after a coalition of anti-war groups
said it intended to take legal action for "mass murder" against Blair
and U.S. President George W. Bush before the ICC.
"What has happened is the mass murder of 20,000 or so Iraqis," Agence
France-Presse (AFP) quoted as saying Chris Coverdale, a spokesman for
the Stop the War coalition.
"The war with Iraq was illegal but, furthermore, crimes were
committed," Coverdale said. "Therefore you want to ensure that people
who have committed the crimes answer for them in court."
The movement brought an estimated one million people to demonstrate
against the war in London a year ago and up to 200,000 braved massive
security to protest at a visit by Bush to London in November 2003.
Wartime Bush and Blair faced similar war crimes charges last June
after law suits were filed against them in Belgium under the universal
competence law.
Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu said last month
that Blair and Bush should have the guts to say sorry for waging an
"immoral war" on Iraq.
The International Criminal Court is an independent international
organisation and was established on 17 July 1998 by the Rome Statue of
the ICC. Eighteen judges are permanent members of the Court and are
elected by a secret ballot.
Advice Rewritten
The war crimes campaign came as it also emerged that Goldsmith was
forced hastily to redraft his legal advice to Blair to give an
"unequivocal" assurance to the armed forces that the conflict would be
legal, The Observer reported on Saturday, February 29.
The daily revealed that Britain's Army chiefs refused to go to war in
Iraq amid fears that they could be tried in the future for engaging in
an illegal war.
"Goldsmith wrote to Blair at the end of January [2003] voicing
concerns that the war might be illegal without a second resolution
from the United Nations," the paper said.
Senior British officials told The Observer that Goldsmith was "sitting
on the fence" and that his initial advice was "prevaricating".
The paper said Chief of Staff Michael Boyce only gave his troops the
go-ahead after seeing Goldsmith's final legal advice.
The bombshell's source is unpublished legal documents in the case of
whistleblower Katharine Gun, the intelligence officer, who was accused
of breaching the Official Secrets Act by leaking an e-mail about a
U.S. request that Britain help bug United Nations delegations before
the Iraq war.
Goldsmith surprisingly dropped on February 25 charges against her in
what was seen as a bid to prevent these details from being revealed in
open court.
Commenting on the revelations, Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat
Foreign Affairs spokesman, said: "I have no doubt whatever that if
Parliament had been told these things, the Government would not have
achieved its majority and been unable to go to war."
"Public opinion, already deeply divided, would have swung
overwhelmingly against the Government," he added.
The revelations will also increase pressure for the Butler inquiry to
study the Gun case.
Blair bowed to mounting pressures both from his Labor Party and the
opposition and announced a cross-party inquiry into the quality of
British intelligence about Iraq's alleged weapons, which have not been
found so far.
Congress-pressured Bush ordered in February a bipartisan commission to
probe apparent flaws in intelligence used to invade Iraq.
http://islamonline.net/

Mujahid wrote:

Mujahid wrote:

alfalastinee@netscape.net (Mujahid) wrote in
news:1b90217.0403021122.3db757ed@posting.google.com:
America is not a member of the ICC.

From: "Wotan" <Wotan@Valhalla.net>
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<Pi51c.123$M85.30163@news.uswest.net>
Subject: Re: Blair Accused Of War Crimes Charges Before ICC - Bu$h is Next
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"=> Vox Populi " <vox@popu.li> wrote in message
news:Pi51c.123$M85.30163@news.uswest.net...

Sad, but true.

Yes, the attempts of Blair and Bush to put Slobodan Milosovitch on
trial for war crimes in Yugoslavia, are looking pretty sick and
hypocritical when they are both guilty of at least as much death in
Iraq and Afghanistan !

The only difference is that Milosovitch was slaughtering Moslems
to protect his own Christain population - whereas Bush and Blair
were slaughering Moslems because Israel wanted them slaughtered.

On Wed, 3 Mar 2004 08:52:15 GMT, johnmanyjars@eat#@($.com wrote:
<snip - quoted #@($ from Wotanidiot and Poxtroll deleted>
Please don't quote these two idiots' rubbish.
They are in everyone's killfile.