High Court throws out bid to prosecute Blair over Iraq War

AN ATTEMPT to haul Tony Blair to court over the Iraq War has been blocked by High Court judges.

Former Iraqi general Abdul Wahed Shannan Al Rabbat alleged the thenprime minister committed a ‘crime of aggression’ by invading Iraq in 2003.

Mr Al Rabbat, who lives in exile in Oman, wanted to bring a private prosecution against Mr Blair, former foreign secretary Jack Straw, and ex-attorney general Lord Goldsmith based on last year’s damning Chilcot Report into the invasion that killed 179 UK servicemen and women.

Last year, magistrates turned down Mr Al Rabbat’s bid to bring a prosecution on the grounds that Mr Blair had ‘immunity’ from criminal trial.

He then sought a judicial review in an attempt to get the Supreme Court to overturn a 2006 House of Lords ruling that the crime of aggression did not exist in England and Wales.

But the Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd and Mr Justice Ouseley dismissed the application, ruling there was no such crime and ‘no prospect’ of the case succeeding.

WITH young people leaving university up to £50,000 in debt and many finding their degrees don’t lead to a graduate-level job, why should they also have to pay over the odds for their student loans?

While the Government uses the Consumer Price Index as its official measure of inflation, increases in student loan rates are pegged to the higher – and less accurate – Retail Price Index. So instead of continuing to pay 4.6 per cent interest from September, they will pay 6.1 per cent.

Isn’t their burden heavy enough already? Surely they should be given the most favourable rates – not charged a premium. THE attempt to bring a private prosecution against Tony Blair for taking Britain into the Iraq War under false pretences failed yesterday, but that certainly doesn’t make him innocent. In the court of public opinion – and to the families of 179 British soldiers and countless Iraqi civilians who died in that catastrophic campaign – he has blood on his hands.