Entrades
GEORGE MONBIOT: COMMENT - Jan 29 2010 16:48
The only question that counts is the one that the Chilcot inquiry won't address: was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg tribunal called "the supreme international crime": the crime of aggression.
But there's a problem with official inquiries in the United Kingdom: the government appoints their members and sets their terms of reference. It's the equivalent of a criminal suspect being allowed to choose what the charges should be, who should judge his case and who should sit on the jury.
Two weeks ago a Dutch inquiry, led by a former supreme court judge, found that the invasion had "no sound mandate in international law". Last month Johan van Zyl Steyn, a former UK law lord, said that "in the absence of a second United Nations resolution authorising the invasion, it was illegal". In November Thomas Bingham, the former UK lord chief justice, stated that without the blessing of the UN, the Iraq war was "a serious violation of international law and the rule of law".
Under the UN charter, two conditions must be met before a war can legally be waged. The parties to a dispute must first "seek a solution by negotiation" (article 33). They can take up arms without an explicit mandate from the UN Security Council only "if an armed attack occurs against [them]" (article 51). Neither of these conditions applied in Iraq.
The United States and UK governments rejected Iraq's attempts to negotiate. At one point, the US state department even announced that it would "go into thwart mode" to prevent the Iraqis from resuming talks on weapons inspection. Iraq had launched no armed attack against either nation.
We also know that the UK government was aware that the war it planned was illegal. In March 2002, the Cabinet office explained that "a legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to law officers' advice, none currently exists."
In July 2002 Peter Goldsmith, the attorney general, told the prime minister that there were only "three possible legal bases" for launching a war -- "self-defence, humanitarian intervention or [Security Council] authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case."
US President George W Bush and Blair later failed to obtain UN Security Council authorisation.
As the resignation letter on the eve of the war from Elizabeth Wilmshurst, then the foreign office's deputy legal adviser, revealed, her office had "consistently" advised that an invasion would be unlawful without a new UN resolution. She explained that "an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression".
Both Wilmshurst and her former boss, Michael Wood, confirmed their opposition in evidence they gave to the Chilcot inquiry this week.
Without legal justification, the war with Iraq was an act of mass murder: those who died were unlawfully killed by those who commissioned it.
The Nuremberg principles define crimes of aggression (also known as crimes against peace) as "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties". They have been recognised in international law since 1945.
The Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC) and which was ratified by Blair's government in 2001, provides for the court to "exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression" once it has decided how the crime should be defined and prosecuted.
There are two problems. The first is that neither the government nor the opposition has any interest in pursuing these crimes because they would expose themselves to prosecution. The second is that the required legal mechanisms don't yet exist. The governments that ratified the Rome Statute have been filibustering to delay the point at which the crime can be prosecuted by the ICC: after eight years of discussions, the necessary provision still has not been adopted.
Some countries, mostly in eastern Europe and central Asia, have incorporated the crime of aggression into their own laws. In the UK, where it remains illegal to wear an offensive T-shirt, you cannot yet be prosecuted for mass murder commissioned overseas.
All those who believe in justice should campaign for their governments to stop messing about and allow the ICC to start prosecuting the crime of aggression. We should also press for its adoption into national law. But I believe that the British people, who re-elected a government that launched an illegal war, have a duty to do more than that. They must show that they have not, as Blair requested, "moved on" from Iraq, that they are not prepared to allow his crime to remain unpunished, or to allow future leaders to believe that they can safely repeat it.
But how? As I found when I tried to apprehend John Bolton, one of the architects of the war in Bush's government, nothing focuses attention on these issues more than an attempted citizen's arrest.
In October I mooted the idea of a bounty to which the public could contribute, payable to anyone who tried to arrest Blair if he became president of the European Union. He didn't, but I asked those who had pledged money whether we should go ahead anyway. The response was overwhelmingly positive.
So I have launched a website -- www.arrestblair.org -- the purpose of which is to raise money as a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen's arrest of the former prime minister. I have put up the first £100 (R1230) and I encourage you to match it. Anyone meeting the rules I've laid down will be entitled to one quarter of the total pot: the bounties will remain available until Blair faces a court of law. The higher the reward, the greater the number of people who are likely to try.
At this stage the arrests will be largely symbolic, though they are likely to have political resonance. But I hope that as pressure builds up and the crime of aggression is adopted by the courts, these attempts will help to press governments to prosecute.
There must be no hiding place for those who have committed crimes against peace.
No civilised country can allow mass murderers to "move on".
A nation still ravaged
For weeks residents of Iraq's capital had felt a sense of dread, writes Martin Chulov in Baghdad. Behind the glitz of new shop fronts, the breezy wave of a soldier at a checkpoint and the promise of better times had been a lurking fear that the bombers would strike again. On Monday, they did.
At least 36 people were killed and more than 80 injured when suicide bombers and gunmen launched the latest in a string of coordinated assaults on prominent buildings. The targets were hotels often used by visiting foreigners.
At about 3:45pm the first boom resonated through the centre of Bagdad. A bomber had breached the passage between the Sheraton and Palestine hotels in the riverfront enclave of Abu Nawas. The site was blown up by a cement mixer full of explosives in late 2005.
Minutes later the Babylon hotel, on the banks of the Tigris river directly south from the new American embassy, was hit by a car bomb that destroyed much of the hotel's facade and spread panic in the surrounding suburb of Jadireyah.
Then, five minutes later, came the spectacular finale.
A burst of gunfire gave the first sign that the Hamra hotel was under attack. The shooting quickly intensified as security guards and Kurdish peshmerga soldiers guarding the nearby presidential neighbourhood returned fire.
Eyewitnesses say the shooting briefly stopped. Then a white van with a flashing red light to resemble an emergency vehicle zig-zagged past the entrance barriers.
The bomb-laden van got within 30m of the Hamra lobby when a massive plume of dirty smoke shot skywards and an air-cracking bang rattled through the nearby sandstone houses.
The Hamra had previously been targeted by al-Qaeda in Iraq after the group secured a foothold during the post-invasion mayhem of 2005. That time, one of the hotel's two towers was hit. Yesterday the second tower took the blast and was reduced to ruins.
The hotel compound, which houses reporters from the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Times and US National Public Radio, was littered with charred splinters of the bomb vehicle.
Six weeks before the country's general election, the attacks will make it increasingly difficult for the government to claim it has increased security in the capital.
The bombers struck as the most infamous of Saddam Hussein's former loyalists, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, was executed after weeks of delays.
Bystanders saw the timing of the bombings as more than a coincidence.
"Of course it is the Ba'athists," said a peshmerga soldier. "They've been trying to destroy things for months - and they'll keep trying." -- © Guardian News and Media 2010
But there's a problem with official inquiries in the United Kingdom: the government appoints their members and sets their terms of reference. It's the equivalent of a criminal suspect being allowed to choose what the charges should be, who should judge his case and who should sit on the jury.
Two weeks ago a Dutch inquiry, led by a former supreme court judge, found that the invasion had "no sound mandate in international law". Last month Johan van Zyl Steyn, a former UK law lord, said that "in the absence of a second United Nations resolution authorising the invasion, it was illegal". In November Thomas Bingham, the former UK lord chief justice, stated that without the blessing of the UN, the Iraq war was "a serious violation of international law and the rule of law".
Under the UN charter, two conditions must be met before a war can legally be waged. The parties to a dispute must first "seek a solution by negotiation" (article 33). They can take up arms without an explicit mandate from the UN Security Council only "if an armed attack occurs against [them]" (article 51). Neither of these conditions applied in Iraq.
The United States and UK governments rejected Iraq's attempts to negotiate. At one point, the US state department even announced that it would "go into thwart mode" to prevent the Iraqis from resuming talks on weapons inspection. Iraq had launched no armed attack against either nation.
We also know that the UK government was aware that the war it planned was illegal. In March 2002, the Cabinet office explained that "a legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to law officers' advice, none currently exists."
In July 2002 Peter Goldsmith, the attorney general, told the prime minister that there were only "three possible legal bases" for launching a war -- "self-defence, humanitarian intervention or [Security Council] authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case."
US President George W Bush and Blair later failed to obtain UN Security Council authorisation.
As the resignation letter on the eve of the war from Elizabeth Wilmshurst, then the foreign office's deputy legal adviser, revealed, her office had "consistently" advised that an invasion would be unlawful without a new UN resolution. She explained that "an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression".
Both Wilmshurst and her former boss, Michael Wood, confirmed their opposition in evidence they gave to the Chilcot inquiry this week.
Without legal justification, the war with Iraq was an act of mass murder: those who died were unlawfully killed by those who commissioned it.
The Nuremberg principles define crimes of aggression (also known as crimes against peace) as "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties". They have been recognised in international law since 1945.
The Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC) and which was ratified by Blair's government in 2001, provides for the court to "exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression" once it has decided how the crime should be defined and prosecuted.
There are two problems. The first is that neither the government nor the opposition has any interest in pursuing these crimes because they would expose themselves to prosecution. The second is that the required legal mechanisms don't yet exist. The governments that ratified the Rome Statute have been filibustering to delay the point at which the crime can be prosecuted by the ICC: after eight years of discussions, the necessary provision still has not been adopted.
Some countries, mostly in eastern Europe and central Asia, have incorporated the crime of aggression into their own laws. In the UK, where it remains illegal to wear an offensive T-shirt, you cannot yet be prosecuted for mass murder commissioned overseas.
All those who believe in justice should campaign for their governments to stop messing about and allow the ICC to start prosecuting the crime of aggression. We should also press for its adoption into national law. But I believe that the British people, who re-elected a government that launched an illegal war, have a duty to do more than that. They must show that they have not, as Blair requested, "moved on" from Iraq, that they are not prepared to allow his crime to remain unpunished, or to allow future leaders to believe that they can safely repeat it.
But how? As I found when I tried to apprehend John Bolton, one of the architects of the war in Bush's government, nothing focuses attention on these issues more than an attempted citizen's arrest.
In October I mooted the idea of a bounty to which the public could contribute, payable to anyone who tried to arrest Blair if he became president of the European Union. He didn't, but I asked those who had pledged money whether we should go ahead anyway. The response was overwhelmingly positive.
So I have launched a website -- www.arrestblair.org -- the purpose of which is to raise money as a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen's arrest of the former prime minister. I have put up the first £100 (R1230) and I encourage you to match it. Anyone meeting the rules I've laid down will be entitled to one quarter of the total pot: the bounties will remain available until Blair faces a court of law. The higher the reward, the greater the number of people who are likely to try.
At this stage the arrests will be largely symbolic, though they are likely to have political resonance. But I hope that as pressure builds up and the crime of aggression is adopted by the courts, these attempts will help to press governments to prosecute.
There must be no hiding place for those who have committed crimes against peace.
No civilised country can allow mass murderers to "move on".
A nation still ravaged
For weeks residents of Iraq's capital had felt a sense of dread, writes Martin Chulov in Baghdad. Behind the glitz of new shop fronts, the breezy wave of a soldier at a checkpoint and the promise of better times had been a lurking fear that the bombers would strike again. On Monday, they did.
At least 36 people were killed and more than 80 injured when suicide bombers and gunmen launched the latest in a string of coordinated assaults on prominent buildings. The targets were hotels often used by visiting foreigners.
At about 3:45pm the first boom resonated through the centre of Bagdad. A bomber had breached the passage between the Sheraton and Palestine hotels in the riverfront enclave of Abu Nawas. The site was blown up by a cement mixer full of explosives in late 2005.
Minutes later the Babylon hotel, on the banks of the Tigris river directly south from the new American embassy, was hit by a car bomb that destroyed much of the hotel's facade and spread panic in the surrounding suburb of Jadireyah.
Then, five minutes later, came the spectacular finale.
A burst of gunfire gave the first sign that the Hamra hotel was under attack. The shooting quickly intensified as security guards and Kurdish peshmerga soldiers guarding the nearby presidential neighbourhood returned fire.
Eyewitnesses say the shooting briefly stopped. Then a white van with a flashing red light to resemble an emergency vehicle zig-zagged past the entrance barriers.
The bomb-laden van got within 30m of the Hamra lobby when a massive plume of dirty smoke shot skywards and an air-cracking bang rattled through the nearby sandstone houses.
The Hamra had previously been targeted by al-Qaeda in Iraq after the group secured a foothold during the post-invasion mayhem of 2005. That time, one of the hotel's two towers was hit. Yesterday the second tower took the blast and was reduced to ruins.
The hotel compound, which houses reporters from the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Times and US National Public Radio, was littered with charred splinters of the bomb vehicle.
Six weeks before the country's general election, the attacks will make it increasingly difficult for the government to claim it has increased security in the capital.
The bombers struck as the most infamous of Saddam Hussein's former loyalists, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, was executed after weeks of delays.
Bystanders saw the timing of the bombings as more than a coincidence.
"Of course it is the Ba'athists," said a peshmerga soldier. "They've been trying to destroy things for months - and they'll keep trying." -- © Guardian News and Media 2010
Cap comentari:
Publica un comentari a l'entrada