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ICC unable to prosecute Tony Blair for war crimes: Pundit

Monday, 04 July 2016 5:16 AM [ Last Update: Monday, 04 July 2016 5:16 AM ]

Former British prime minister Tony Blair leaves Millbank television and radio studios in central London on June 26, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

Press TV has interviewed Jim Brann, with Stop the War Coalition from London, and Edward Peck, a former US ambassador to Iraq from Washington, to discuss a decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) not to prosecute former British prime minister Tony Blair over war crimes during the Iraq War.

Brann says some former British officials from the UK Foreign Office described the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a crime of aggression; however, he notes, the ICC could not prosecute Blair for his role in instigating the war, because changes in the laws of the court have restricted its jurisdiction.

Two months before the invasion, the chief legal adviser of the British Foreign Office, Sir Michael Wood, wrote his opinion that the war would be a “crime of aggression” and then, the deputy legal adviser of the Foreign Office, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, stepped down one day before the invasion.

Prosecutors at the ICC have ruled out putting Blair on trial for war crimes as they prepare to examine the Chilcot report about the Iraq War.

The ICC said that the decision to launch the war was outside the court’s jurisdiction. In an official statement to the Telegraph, the ICC said its prosecutors would examine the report for evidence of war crimes committed by British troops.

Brann maintains that the Nuremberg Judgment of 1946 said the “supreme crime was the crime of aggression” but when the ICC was set up in 1998, the definition of crime of aggression was left out of the court’s jurisdiction.

As a result, he argues, the ICC cannot prosecute Tony Blair for “the supreme international crime.”

Referring to the possibility of prosecuting Blair at a British court, he says the prospect of seeing him being prosecuted inside the UK in the near future is not good, but it may be possible in the years to come.

Peck, for his part, believes the ICC is under political pressure in prosecuting politicians, adding, “Certain amounts of politics enter into everything that go on both domestically and internationally and I doubt very much if the ICC was totally protected from any inputs from outside.”

He further said it is almost impossible in countries like the US and the UK to determine who is responsible for decisions such as starting a war.

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