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02.11.03, 15:56
na Irakoriko?
Blair waged war illegally, say leading lawyers
By Severin Carrell
02 November 2003
Tony Blair is facing a formal complaint to the international war-crimes
tribunal by a panel of senior international legal experts for unlawfully
waging war in Iraq.
The panel of eight law professors, including experts from Oxford University
and the London School of Economics, is studying evidence that alleges Britain
has broken international treaties on war and human rights in Iraq.
The allegations centre on Iraqi civilian deaths caused by British cluster
bombs, the targeting of power stations and the use of toxic depleted uranium
shells against tanks.
Lawyers advising the panel allege that these tactics have led to thousands of
avoidable civilian casualties - in breach of the Geneva Conventions. The case
against the Prime Minister is strengthened, they claim, by his failure to get
UN sanction for the war.
The panel will meet in London on Saturday to decide whether the evidence is
strong enough for a formal complaint to the chief prosecutor at the
International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Under the Rome statute that set the ICC up in 1998, the chief prosecutor,
Luis Moreno Ocampo, an Argentinian who investigated atrocities by his
country's former military junta, can launch independent inquiries into war
crimes complaints.
The inquiry's organisers think it highly likely the panel will find enough
evidence to justify a complaint, but it remains unclear how the court will
react. Earlier complaints about the war in Iraq, by groups of Greek and
Belgian lawyers, were rejected.