Ex-UK minister of defence, former army chief of staff named in Iraq war crimes case

Britain has been referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague over accusations of war crimes committed during the occupation of Iraq. There was a call for an ICC investigation under Article 15 of the Rome Statute into the actions of senior British officials during the conflict, World Socialist Web Site reported. The submission specifically names the former chief of staff General Sir Peter Wall and two ministers in Tony Blair’s Labour government, former Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon and former Defense Minister Adam Ingram, as officials who should have to answer claims about the systematic use of torture and cruelty. The Secretary-General of the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), Wolfgang Kaleck, said, “With the current communication to the ICC we want to move forward the criminal prosecution against those political and military leaders in the UK who bear the most responsibility for systematic torture in Iraq.” The formal complaint, The Responsibility of UK Officials for War Crimes Involving Systematic Detainee Abuse in Iraq from 2003-2008, was lodged by Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) and the ECCHR with the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor. It says that its 250-page submission, the result of years of work by both organisations, “is the most detailed ever submitted to the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor on war crimes allegedly committed by British forces in Iraq”. The ECCHR said that given the scope and scale of the crimes carried out between 2003 and 2008, the responsibility and blame lay at the feet of “individuals at the highest levels” of the British Army and political system. UK military commanders knew or should have known that forces under their control were committing or about to commit war crimes, but failed to act. “Civilian superiors knew or consciously disregarded information at their disposal, which clearly indicated that UK services personnel were committing war crimes in Iraq.”