Greek Lawyers sue Blair over war

Lawyers to sue Blair over war

Top lawyers from Greece are filing a lawsuit with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague on Monday against senior UK officials.

They want to indict Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior members of the UK government and military for allegedly breaching international law by attacking Iraq.

The lawyers, from the Athens Bar Council, say they have compiled a dossier of "strong evidence" against the officials, including more than 20 alleged war crimes.

They include the killing of Iraqi civilians, depriving the population of drinking water in cities such as Basra, the destruction of food supplies and the bombardment of residential areas.

A senior member of the association told the BBC the information had come from a variety of sources including doctors and journalists who were in Iraq during the war.

He said the alleged crimes breached the statute of the International Criminal Court.

Athens lawyers to file suit against Blair over Iraq

ABC Net.au -Mon, 28 Jul 2003

"...The president of the association, Dimitris Paxinos, said in a radio interview that he did not expect the court to summon Mr Blair to testify but said this was a decision to be taken by the tribunal in The Hague.

The 20,000-member bar association alleges that US and British military forces in Iraq breached international treaties such as the UN charter, the Geneva Conventions and the statutes of the International Criminal Court.

...It is now up to the prosecutor of the court, Luis Moreno OCampo, to decide if there is any substance to the 47-page complaint, and whether it should be prosecuted...

...Mr Paxinos said the bar association had not brought a similar case against US President George W Bush because the United States had not ratified the treaty setting up the International Criminal Court and is therefore outside its jurisdiction.

If the case is heard, the bar association said it would summon a number of high-level personalities as witnesses, including UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi and the EU's foreign and security policy chief, Javier Solana.

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