Kuala Lumpur: Former US president George W Bush and British ex-premier Tony Blair have been found guilty
for "crimes against peace" during the Iraq war at a three-day
mock tribunal in Malaysia.
Bush and Blair were tried in absentia by a Kuala Lumpur
War Crimes Tribunal (KLWCC), an imitative of former premier
Mahathir Mohammad that began on Saturday.
The hearing was conducted by seven senior judges headed
by retired Malaysian Federal Court judge Abdul Kadir Sulaiman.
The tribunal reached a unanimous guilty verdict after
four hours of deliberation.
Announcing the verdict, Abdul Kadir said Bush and Blair
had acted with deceit, selectively manipulated international
law and committed an unlawful act of aggression and an
international crime by invading Iraq in 2003.
The tribunal found that both the accused had contemplated
to invade Iraq as far back as September 2001 and had defied
the United Nations Resolution 1441, which clearly did not
authorise the use of military action to compel Iraq's
compliance.
Bush and seven top US officials who served under him
faced a separate charge of crimes of torture and war crimes at
the tribunal of conscience, modelled on the one convened by
philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1966 to try the perpetrators
of the Vietnam War.
Kadir said the Bush and Blair had admitted since the Iraq
war that they knew or believed the intelligence reports on
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to be unreliable and yet
both proceeded to wage war against Iraq based on this false
and contrite basis.
Memoirs by both, which were tendered as evidence, were
also found to implicate Bush and Blair, both having admitted
their own intention to invade Iraq, regardless of
international law.
The tribunal suggested that the KLWCC file a report with
the International Criminal Court against both the accused
under the Nuremberg principles and include reports of genocide
and crimes against humanity committed by Bush and Blair.
It also recommended that the names of both accused be
entered into the Register of War Criminals and publicised.
Chief prosecutor Professor Gurdial S Nijar, in his
summation, reiterated key documents of several intelligence
reports that indicated there were no weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq reported by the International Atomic
Energy Agency.
Mahathir, who stepped down in 2003 after 22 years in
power, unveiled plans for the tribunal in 2007.
PTI
First Published: Wednesday, November 23, 2011, 18:45