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International Criminal Court: Blair accused of Iraq war crimes

01 May 2003

Greek lawyers have presented a dossier of 22 incidents, involving British troops in Iraq, to the new International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, as part of a complaint accusing UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and other ministers of genocide and war crimes. Members of the Athens Bar Association lodged their 47-page complaint with the ICC's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo. Zoe Konstantopoulou, who helped compile the dossier, told the Independent newspaper that the allegations included three categories of offences: crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. The Bar Association says that the war against Iraq breached the Charter of the United Nations and the Geneva Convention as well as the ICC's statutes: "The repeated, blatant violations by the United States and Britain of the stipulations of the four 1949 Geneva conventions, the 1954 convention of the Hague as well as the charter of the International Criminal Court, constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity" (quoted in the Guardian 29.7.03). The ICC, which was established in 2002 to try cases of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, will now decide if the Athens Bar Association has case. If it were to decide that there is a case to answer it would be referred to the UK's courts. If they refuse to take the case the ICC could start proceedings. Lawyers in the UK are also assembling evidence to evaluate whether "weapons or methods of attack used in the war came within the definition of war crimes" and should be presented to the ICC.

Athens Bar Association, http://www.dsa.gr; International Criminal Court, http://www.icc.int/; Independent 29.5.03.; Guardian 29.5.03