Gentle backs action on Chilcot
Call for legal bid over six-year wait for publication of Iraq war report
THE mother of a teenage soldier killed in Iraq said families are “ready for the truth” as she backed a call for legal action over the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry.
A group of 29 families have issued a legal ultimatum to Sir John Chilcot amid claims the law requiring inquiries to be concluded in a reasonable timeframe may have been breached.
They have said they will take legal action if Sir John, who began the inquiry in 2009, does not publish by the end of the year.
Anti-war campaigner Rose Gentle, from Glasgow, said the bereaved have struggled to move on with their lives.
Ms Gentle, whose son Gordon, 19, was killed in a bomb attack in 2004, said: “We can’t get closure. It’s been going on too long now. It’s hard for all the families. We really just want it over and done with.
“I would definitely support legal action if there’s not a date given of when the report is going to be published.”
Ms Gentle became a high-profile campaigner following the death of Gordon, a soldier with the Royal Highland Fusiliers, in a roadside bomb blast in Basra.
An inquest heard that he might have survived the attack had his Land Rover been fitted with vital bomb-disabling equipment, but an order to collect the kit had not been passed on to his unit.
Sir John insisted last month that his inquiry was making “significant progress”, although he could not set a date for the publication of his findings.
The problem lies in the continuing “Maxwellisation” process, which gives the opportunity to individuals facing possible criticism in the report to respond and is holding up publication.
But Reg Keys, whose son, Lance Corporal Tom Keys, was killed in Iraq in 2003 aged 20, insisted that there is no legal requirement for the inquiry to go through such a process.
Mr Keys said: “He’s had time enough now and he’s not imposing deadlines on this and that’s where our argument is. We want to be given a deadline now, by the end of the year, or legal action will be following.”
He said: “Yes, I’d like to see Tony Blair dragged in shackles off to court as a war criminal because we have to bear in mind 180 British service personnel were killed here, over 3,500 wounded, two million Iraqis fled Iraq, over 100,000 innocent Iraqis have been killed.
Former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said: “I share the frustration of the families of those who died or were injured in the Iraq war.
“The problem here is that the form of the inquiry was too loose and unstructured and lacked the discipline which the appointment of counsel to the inquiry would have brought.
“In the last parliament I raised these matters with David Cameron and he agreed with me that neither the form of the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday nor Chilcot could be justified in the future.”