Chilcot report: lawyers debate legal avenues for prosecuting Blair

Following the publication of the Chilcot report, lawyers have been considering the legal options, if any, for prosecuting Tony Blair.

Ahead of its publication, Geoffrey Robertson QC said that bringing Mr Blair to the International Criminal Court (ICC) was “a legal impossibility” as there was no defined crime of aggression at the time of the Iraq invasion in 2003.

Writing in The Guardian, Mr Robertson stated: “There is little doubt that the US/UK invasion of the sovereign state of Iraq in 2003 was an unlawful breach of the UN charter, which permits such force only in self-defence, ie when there is an imminent threat of an armed attack, or (less certainly in 2003) a case for humanitarian intervention. But a breach of the charter does not mean that those who lead it are guilty of a war crime – which must, like any other crime, be both clearly defined and justiciable by an available court.”

The Rome Statute established the ICC, which opened in 2002. However, its jurisdiction was postponed until member states could agree on a definition of the crime of aggression. They came to a consensus in 2010 but, as the law is not retroactive, Mr Blair cannot be prosecuted.

Mr Robertson also addresses the prospect of catching Mr Blair on the basis the Nuremberg principle has become common law. However, he explains that this is also impossible following Lord Bingham’s rejection of the idea in 2006 when he stated that it is a matter for Parliament to legislate on.

But Mr Blair’s actions before the invasion could constitute misconduct in public office according to a former Director of Public Prosecutions.

Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, DPP between 2003 and 2008, accused Mr Blair of “twisting both the evidence and the law”.

He told The Times: “It is the final disgrace that a British Prime Minister should have sunk so low as to twist not just the evidence but even the law itself, in order to send British men and women into a conflict for which there was no justification other than the satisfaction of his own desire for flattery in Washington.

“Millions of people will feel that if the law now has no reckoning for Mr Blair, then it is the law itself that is diminished by his disgrace.”

He added: “It is of no comfort that the consequences of Mr Blair’s outrageous manipulations are with us still in Syria, Iraq and throughout a world made radically more dangerous by his awful miscalculations.”

The US State Department said in a statement yesterday that it would not respond to the Chilcot report.

A spokesman said: “We are not interested in re-litigating the decisions that lead to the Iraq war in 2003 … we are not going to go through it , we are not going to examine it, we are not going to try to make an analysis of it or make judgment of the findings one way or another. Our focus is on the challenges we have in Iraq and Syria right now.”