Nuremberg is valid precedent for Iraq trials

By Dr Cesar Chelala, Gulf Times

Recently in Dublin, anti-war protesters threw eggs and shoes at Tony Blair. During a TV interview, he showed a flash of exasperation when asked to explain why people thought that he was a war criminal. His annoyance at the question is little consolation for the thousands of families who lost loved ones during that illegal war. Blair should be tried under principles established for the Nuremberg trials, together with former president George W Bush and his advisers who orchestrated the Iraq war.

The Nuremberg Principles, a set of guidelines established after World War II to try Nazi party members, were developed to determine what constitutes a war crime. Those principles could also be applied today, when judging the conditions that led to the Iraq war and in the process to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, many of them children, and to the devastation of a country's infrastructure.

In January of 2003, a group of US law professors warned president George W Bush that he and senior officials of his government could be prosecuted for war crimes if military tactics violated international humanitarian law. The group, led by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, sent similar warnings to British prime minister Tony Blair and to Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien.

Although the US is not part of the International Criminal Court (ICC), American officials could be prosecuted in other countries under the Geneva Convention principles, indicated Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Ratner likened the situation to the attempted prosecution by a Spanish magistrate, Baltazar Garzon, of the Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was held under house arrest in London.

Both former president George W Bush and senior officials in his government, as well as Tony Blair, could be tried for being responsible for torture and other war crimes under the Geneva Conventions. In addition, they could also be tried for violation of fundamental Nuremberg principles. In 2007, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC's chief prosecutor, told The Sunday Telegraph that he could envisage a scenario in which both Blair and then George W Bush could face charges at The Hague.

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