Political
Coverup of Iraq Atrocities
By Felicity
Arbuthnot
Nothing justifies killing of innocent people.
— Tony Blair, CNN, January 15th, 2015
January 05, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "DV"
- A little over three months short of the
thirteenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq
(March 20th, 2003) now widely accepted as unlawful
even by the former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan,
it has emerged that the Unit in the British Ministry
of Defence established to investigate “allegations
of torture and unlawful killings” by members of the
46,000 UK armed forces originally deployed has been
“overwhelmed” with cases.
The
Independent
reports that:
“British
soldiers who have served in Iraq may face
prosecution for crimes, including murder”, according
to Mark Warwick, the former police detective heading
the Unit, the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT).
In his
first major interview, Mr. Warwick told the
Independent he “believed there would be
sufficient evidence to justify criminal charges.”
The
“serious allegations” which “include homicide”,
could lead to “significant evidence” being laid
before “the Service Prosecuting Authority to
prosecute and charge.”
Allegations
of torture, rape and unlawful killing by British
armed services personnel between 2003 and 2009 –
after which they slunk out of Iraq under cover of
darkness – has increased tenfold since the Unit was
established in November 2010:
“In 2010
(there were) cases involving 152 victims.” There are
now: “more than 1,500 victims”, according to recent
update. “Of these, 280 are victims of alleged
unlawful killing by British forces in Iraq, but more
than 200 of these cases have yet to be investigated,
with just 25 under investigation.”
Further:
“Of 1,235
alleged cases of ill-treatment, including
accusations of rape and torture, only 45 are under
investigation.”
Cases are
to be reviewed over the coming twelve to eighteen
months with “significant cases” being studied with
“the war crimes threshold” in mind. Five years after
IHAT’s establishment there have been no
prosecutions.
To the
cynic IHAT seems to have all the hallmarks of a
typical British sweeping under the straw operation
with the fox in charge of the hen house brooms.
The
organization was set up by the Ministry of Defence
to investigate the armed services’, employees of the
Ministry of Defence, alleged misconduct. Though it
was established under Mark Warwick, a civilian
detective, he was originally assisted by the Royal
Military Police (RMP) until a ruling in the UK Court
of Appeal in November 2011that their involvement
“substantially compromised” proceeding since they
had been involved in detentions in Iraq – which were
what were being scrutinised.
Armed
Forces Minister Nick Harvey responded by replacing
the RMP with the Royal Navy Police. Birmingham, UK’s
Public Interest Lawyers who represent many who claim
to have been tortured, challenged the new den of
advocate foxes, since the Naval Police had also
taken part in interrogations, alleging: “that abuses
were so systemic and widespread that only a public
inquiry will satisfy the UK’s human rights
obligations.”
The
judgment handed down on May 24th, 2013 was that:
“IHAT has now been structured in such a way that it
can independently carry out its investigative and
prosecutorial functions.” RIP independent British
judiciary.
The
Ministry of Defence has one last, well, defence –
and defiance. The funds it gave to the “Inquiry”
were due to be cut off in 2016. They have been
extended to 2019. Were there any will hidden
somewhere in those handpicked from the ranks of
those which includes alleged perpetrators to deliver
justice, in such a time scale, given such a massive,
meticulous legal task, it would be between Herculean
to impossible to achieve.
Incidentally the Royal Navy still had a contingency
in Iraq until May 2011, even after the Inquiry had
been established into the horrors of Britain’s £9.24
Billion lawless onslaught (2010 figure.)
The
savagery will surely haunt the UK and “allies” for
countless decades to come. What an age since Tony
Blair’s
Christmas visit to Iraq on December 23rd, 2005
when he crept in to the country, his visit kept a
secret until he appeared, helicoptered in from
Kuwait.
He told the
troops: “The importance of this is probably greater
today than it has ever been” and that Iraq would now
mean that: “… the region is more safe, our own
country is more safe, because international
terrorism will have been dealt a huge blow. If we
manage to defeat the terrorism here, we will have
dealt it a blow worldwide.”
Of course,
before the invasion there was no terrorism, car
bombs, suicide bombers in Iraq, Syria or widely
elsewhere. They manifested and multiplied with the
arrival of the invaders.
Tony Blair
is pursued globally by those aiming to try him for
war crimes, crimes against the peace, or crimes of
aggression. Events have displayed his delusional
mendacity not alone in his hand in the unimaginable
horrors of the destruction of Iraq and that
inflicted on the people, country and poisoning of
the region by the chemically toxic and radioactive
weapons used – but the totally predictable blowback
it has wrought in terror alerts and acts in the West
and against Western interests.
The least
that is owed, minimal as it is, given the enormity
of Iraq’s victims, is independent, honest
investigations and justice from Britain’s IHAT. It
is very little, very late. It will not quell the
grief, the rage, home the dispossessed, the orphans,
widows, or bring back the dead, but it would be a
start.
Charles
Antony Lynton Blair, QC, in the Dock with his
cohorts in this tragedy, which will be recorded
amongst history’s great crimes, would also serve as
a warning that Nuremberg’s great Principles still
apply, as expressed then by Chief American
Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson:
To
initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not
only an international crime; it is the supreme
international crime differing only from other
war crimes in that it contains within itself the
accumulated evil of the whole.
Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist
with special knowledge of Iraq. Author, with Nikki
van der Gaag, of
Baghdad in the Great City series for World
Almanac books, she has also been Senior Researcher
for two Award winning documentaries on Iraq, John
Pilger's Paying the Price: Killing the
Children of Iraq and Denis Halliday
Returns for RTE
(Ireland.)
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