Key Takeaways:
- The UK’s role in the Iraq war has come under scrutiny due to newly released government files suggesting that former Prime Minister Tony Blair pressured officials to prevent British soldiers accused of mistreating Iraqi civilians from being tried in civil courts.
- The files reveal that Blair believed it was "essential" that courts like the International Criminal Court (ICC) did not investigate UK actions in Iraq.
- The UK’s decision to join the war in Iraq, launched by the US in 2003, has become one of the UK’s most widely investigated and criticized foreign policy decisions.
- There is evidence that UK soldiers abused hundreds of Iraqi civilians in their custody during the war, including cases of violent beatings, sleep and sensory deprivation, and sexual humiliation.
- The ICC opened an inquiry into the UK’s role in the Iraq war in 2005, but closed it in 2006, and reopened it in 2014 before abandoning it in 2020 due to lack of evidence that the UK government had blocked investigations.
Introduction to the Iraq War
The United Kingdom’s role in the Iraq war has come under the spotlight once again, as newly released UK government files appear to suggest that former Prime Minister Tony Blair pressured officials to ensure British soldiers accused of mistreating Iraqi civilians during the war would not be tried in civil courts. The decision to join the war in Iraq, launched by the United States with the UK in full support, in March 2003, has become one of the UK’s most widely investigated and criticized foreign policy decisions. The Iraq war continued until December 2011, resulting in the deaths of over 200,000 Iraqi civilians, 179 British soldiers, and more than 4,000 US soldiers.
Newly Released Documents
Documents released on December 30 to the National Archives in Kew, west London, reveal that in 2005, Blair said it was "essential" that courts like the International Criminal Court (ICC) did not investigate UK actions in Iraq. The documents show that Blair told Antony Phillipson, his private secretary for foreign affairs at the time, that it was "essential" that civil courts did not prosecute British soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi civilians in their custody during the war in Iraq. According to UK media reports, Blair’s comments followed a written memo Phillipson sent him in July 2005 about a meeting between the country’s attorney general at the time and two former UK military chiefs, discussing the case of British soldiers who were accused of beating an Iraqi hotel receptionist, Baha Mousa, to death.
The UK’s Role in the Iraq War
The Blair government justified the UK’s decision to support the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 using now-debunked claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The UK said its aim was to eliminate these and to liberate the people of Iraq from the rule of then-President Saddam Hussein. However, there was a great deal of public debate in the UK about the legality of going to war in Iraq on the basis of what was suspected to be flawed evidence about weapons of mass destruction. Christopher Featherstone, associate lecturer at the Department of Politics, University of York, said that Blair was "frustrated" by worries from officials about the legality of going to war in Iraq, and saw the UK role as showing international support for the US war on terror.
Abuse of Iraqi Civilians
There is a large amount of evidence showing that UK soldiers abused hundreds of Iraqi civilians in their custody during the war. Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), have documented cases of UK soldiers engaging in violent beatings, sleep and sensory deprivation, ‘stress positions’, deprivation of food and water, sexual and religious humiliation, and, in some cases, sexual abuse. In 2005, three UK soldiers were tried by court martial at a British military base in northern Germany, where photographs showing evidence of the abuses they engaged in had been produced. The soldiers denied the charges but were found guilty of abusing Iraqi civilians during the war and were dismissed from the army.
The International Criminal Court’s Involvement
The ICC opened an inquiry into the UK’s role in the Iraq war in 2005, but closed it in 2006, and reopened it in 2014 before abandoning it in 2020 due to lack of evidence that the UK government had blocked investigations. In a 184-page report, the ICC prosecutor’s office said that while there was "reasonable basis to believe" that "members of the British armed forces committed the war crimes of wilful killing, torture, inhuman/cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and rape and/or other forms of sexual violence", the UK government had not tried to block investigations into the case. The prosecutor’s decision has been condemned by rights groups, who argue that the UK government has repeatedly shown little interest in investigating and prosecuting atrocities committed abroad by British troops.
Blair’s Comments on the ICC
Tuesday’s declassified documents have revealed that Blair was confident the ICC would not prosecute UK soldiers. According to the documents, in June 2002, a month before the ICC statute entered into force and about a year before the UK joined the Iraq war, Blair had told John Howard, the Australian prime minister at the time, that countries like the UK had no reason to fear the ICC. Blair wrote to Howard after officials in Australia expressed fears about the ICC’s jurisdiction, as Australia had also joined the US and UK in the Iraq war. However, Featherstone notes that the ICC has historically been accused of being biased in terms of where it has focused its attention and effort in investigating and prosecuting cases, and that there are reasons for this around resources for investigating, the ability to bring the cases to fruition, and the relative power of those being accused.