Chilcot report may be used against soldiers

PROSECUTORS at the International Criminal Court will examine the Chilcot report for evidence of abuse and torture by British soldiers, but have already ruled out putting Tony Blair on trial for war crimes, The Sunday

Telegraph can disclose. The decision has outraged the families of troops killed in Iraq who blame Mr Blair for engineering the war.

Sir John Chilcot’s report, which will finally be published on Wednesday, is expected to strongly criticise Mr Blair’s role in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. In an official statement to

The Sunday Telegraph, the International Criminal Court (ICC) said it would examine the 2.3 million-word report for evidence of war crimes by British troops, but that the decision to go to war remained outside its remit. It means individual soldiers could be prosecuted for war crimes but not Mr Blair.

The ICC, based in The Hague, has begun a “preliminary examination” of claims of torture and abuse by British soldiers, after receiving a dossier from human-rights lawyers acting for alleged Iraqi victims.

In the statement, the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICC said: “We will take note of the Chilcot report when released in the context of its ongoing preliminary examination work concerning Iraq/UK. A preliminary examination is not an investigation, but a process aimed at determining whether reasonable basis exist to open an investigation.

“As already indicated by the Office in 2006, the ‘decision by the UK to go to war in Iraq falls outside the Court’s jurisdiction’.”

The ICC prosecutor’s office said the ICC was looking at introducing a “crime of aggression” which would cover illegal invasions but that “has not yet crystalised and in any event, will not apply retroactively”.

Grieving relatives last night condemned the ICC’s stance. Roger Bacon, whose son, Matt Bacon, a major in the Intelligence Corps, was killed in a roadside bomb in 2005, said: “It is outrageous. It is double standards. These