Why the Prime Minister who led us to war will not be put on trial

THE International Criminal Court will not put Tony Blair on trial for war crimes because decisions on launching a conflict are outside its remit.

The tribunal investigates only atrocities that take place on the battlefield, such as torture, maiming and execution.

The former Labour Prime Minister has faced calls to be prosecuted amid claims he took the UK to war – a decision which plunged the Middle East into bloodshed and violence – based on lies.

But the court in The Hague said that the ‘decision by the UK to go to war in Iraq falls outside the Court’s jurisdiction’.

Only one British soldier, Corporal Donald Payne, has been convicted of a war crime after he pleaded guilty to inhumanely treating civilians in relation to the killing of a hotel receptionist in Basra.

But if Mr Blair had known that British troops had committed war crimes, he could have been prosecuted.

Last month former Congolese vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba was jailed for 18 years by the ICC for heading a sadistic campaign of rape and murder in neighbouring Central African Republic. The 53-year-old ex-militia leader directed troops who acted with ‘particular cruelty’ when they rampaged across the country in 2002-03.