STOP THE WAR
BRINGING THE WAR CRIMINALS TO ACCOUNT
Letter to UN and UK Attorney General
office@stopwar.org.uk to add your name to the 'supplementary signatories' list - see below)
The UK is obliged
as a Signator to The Conventions to investigate these charges. STOP THE WAR asks
you to join as supplementary signatories by e-mail, or post. We want these
signatures to be without end or time limit.
If you agree with the Tony Benn Submission which follows, can you please send
your name to the Stop The War e-mail site (office@stopwar.org.uk),
or by post to Stop The War, 27 Britannia Street, London WC1X 9JP, where it will
be recorded and passed to the UN and Attorney General. Your e-mail address will
be kept secret.
http://stopwar.org.uk/Bennletter.htm
BRINGING THE WAR CRIMINALS TO ACCOUNT
Letter to UN and UK Attorney General
On 7th December
2005 Tony Benn and forty three others, including Rose Gentle, Reg Keys, Harold
Pinter, and Michael Mansfield QC, sent a letter to The UN and to the UK Attorney
General asking them to investigate breaches of The Nuremberg Charter and Geneva
and Hague Conventions during the Iraq
War, and to bring those responsible to account. The UK is obliged as a Signator
to The Conventions to investigate these charges. STOP THE WAR asks you to join
as supplementary signatories by e-mail, or post. We want these signatures to be
without end or time limit, and, as citizens of the UK, to make it clear, that
the Attorney General must fulfill his obligations. Alternatively we risk these
Conventions being torn up, and in the words of Harold Pinter, we will have
"torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder",
without cease. We want to restore dignity, and humanity to our country, not the
rule of Abu Ghraib, the dog lead, and Fallujah
If you agree with the Tony Benn Submission which follows, can you please send
your name to the Stop The War e-mail site (office@stopwar.org.uk),
or by post to Stop The War, 27 Britannia Street, London WC1X 9JP, where it will
be recorded and passed to the UN and Attorney General. Your e-mail address will
be kept secret.
Lindsey German, and Nicholas Wood on behalf of Tony Benn.
I.........……………………………………………………………
AGREE WITH THE TONY BENN SUBMISSION OF 7 DEC 2005
Dated ............................
REQUEST TO KOFI ANNAN, SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS, AND TO THE
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED KINGDOM
With Reference to The Iraq War 2003 – 20005
This is a request to Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN that he should
instigate an investigation into the claims listed in the attachment to this
memorandum. It is also jointly addressed to Lord Goldsmith the Attorney General
of the UK. The UK is a High Contracting Party and Signatory to The Geneva and
Hague Conventions and Protocols and The Nuremberg Charter of 1945, and of The
Rome Statute of The International Criminal Court. It is thus appropriate that
The Attorney General should investigate what appear to be grave breaches of
these Conventions and Protocols, and of UN General Assembly Resolution No 95,
before and during the Iraq War 2003 - 2005.
We are concerned that, should these breaches be established, those responsible
should be held to account. This is urgent. It appears that many breaches, even
now, are continuing to take place.
Submitted by:
Tony Benn
Mrs Rose Gentle MFSO mum of Gordon Gentle killed in Iraq 28:7:04
Reg Keys
Harold Pinter
Prof. Richard Dawkins
Bruce Kent
Lindsey German, Convenor Stop The War Coalition
Michael Mansfield QC
Corin Redgrave
Jemma Redgrave
Andrew Burgin
Mark Steel
Brian Sewell, Columnist on the London "Evening Standard"
Professor Ted Honderich
Dr Martha Mundy, Reader in Anthropology, LSE
David Halpin FRCS
Sara Wood
Nicholas Wood RIBA FRGS
Andreas Whittam Smith
Lord Nicolas Rea
Hywel Williams, MP for Caernarfon
Peter Day
Anabella Pellens
Nicolas Kent, Theatre Director
Alan Plater
Jonathan Price
Willy Russell, Writer
Ralph Steadman
Anna Steadman
Dr C.J. Burns-Cox, Consultant Physician MD FRCP
Michael Naish
Richard Gott
Celia Mitchell
Adrian Mitchell
Una Doyle, NUT
Geoff Evans Bsc Hons Dip LP
Dr Margaret Evans PhD BSc Hons
David Levitt
David Gentleman, Artist
Julian Rea
Sylvester McCoy
Alex Salmond MP, Leader SNP
Supplementary signatories:
George Galloway MP
Cicely and Ian Herbert
Elfyn Llwyd MP, Parliamentary Leader Plaid Cymru
Maureen Hinton
Yasmin Alibhai Brown
Brian Eno
Baroness Dr Jenny Tonge
Roger Lloyd Pack, Actor
Rory Bremner
Janet Street-Porter
Jehane Markham, Writer
Vanessa Redgrave
Adam Price MP
Bill Paterson
Angela Flowers
Ken Loach
Dr Eric Herring
John McDonnel MP
John Austin MP
Paul Mackney, General Secretary NATFHE
Martin Rowson, Cartoonist
Michael Gambon
John Pilger
Katie Mitchell, theatre director
T.G. Walker, Chair, Our World Our Say
Simone La Corbiniere, Director Our World Our Say
Tara Healy-Singh
Terry Jones
Chris Coverdale
Michael Culver, Actor
Amand Ward, Artist
Professor Steven Rose
Ben Wilson
Helen Shaw, Co-Director Inquest
Ricky Thamman
Randolph Riddle (USA)
Timothy Pinney
Mark McGovern
Roger Nettleship
Niall Taylor
Tony Dowling
Richard Wilson
Robert Crick
Philip Challinor
Susan Pishgar (USA)
Theodore Turner
Damuel Rowlands
Charles Jenks (US)
Averil Parkinson
James Williams
Andrew Seal
Dr Alex Scott-Samuel
Anne Aylor
Merilyn Moos
Scott Bush
John Downing
Richard Searle
Chris Shaw
Shaun Tinsley
Alan Brunsdon
David Kilczycki
Simon Banfield
MJ Deva
Michael Bentley
Angie Roche
Florence Durrant
Patricia Sheerin
Maggie Richman
Sylvia Fernandes-DeMelo
Carlos Soto
Stewart McCafferty
Marie Xenophontos
Kathleen Charlton
Valerie Duncan
Barbara Mastropino
Sanjeev Chowdhury
Peter Green
Alan Ledger
Julie Nicholson
Fiona Evans
Michael T. Darwyne
Helen Towers
Tom Wills
David Wilson
Steve Parsons
Marianne Bennett
Sarah Meyer
Alys Elica Zaerin
Kevin Joseph Duckworth
Gillian Hitchcock
Graham Gavin
Dr A M Key
Jean Crocker
Ellen Cantavour (USA)
Paul Ewing
Christopher Leadbeater
Maria Holland
Richard Morris
Shyama Alfred
Cathie Bell (USA)
Trevor Phillips
Linda Atkinson
George Atkinson
Nadia Yassin (Sweden)
Dr. Fouad Elhage (Australia)
Submission:
We allege that the breaches committed
by the UK Government and the USA in coalition partnership during the period 2002
- 2005 outlined as a selection in summary are as follows:-
1 Crimes Against Peace: Planning and Conducting an Aggressive War using deceit,
including deliberately falsifying reports to arouse passion in support of this
war .
2 Failure to ensure public order and safety by disbanding the army and police of
Iraq, without properly replacing those functions.
3 Extensive destruction of service infrastructure, including drinking water,
sewage systems, telephones and electricity supply, with grave consequences to
the inhabitants of Iraq, especially in hospitals.
4 Deliberate damage to hospitals and medical facilities and personnel including
the shooting up of Red Crescent ambulances, and prevention of movement of
ambulances.
5 Failure to prohibit looting and arson resulting in the despoliation and
pillage of museums, libraries, archaeological sites, hospitals, administrative
buildings and state records.
6 Failure to respect cultural property including the use of the Babylon
archaeological site as a military camp.
7 Economic exploitation of occupied territories by orders of The Provisional
Coalition Administration to the benefit of foreign interests, including the use
of Production Sharing Agreements, and IMF rules, even
though warnings were made by the Attorney General that these may be construed as
contrary to International Law.
8 Seizing botanical assets by Provisional Coalition Administration Order 81,
which ends the prohibition of private ownership of biological resources, and
introduces foreign monopoly rights over seeds.
9 Political persecution by initially sacking all Baath Party members, thereby
very severely reducing the administrative and professional class who had been
obliged to be members.
10 Religious persecution: US Defence Secretary memo of 2 December 2002
sanctioned the use of religious humiliation against detainees.
11 Use of cable ties as a restraint to detainees' wrists causing injury and
unnecessary suffering .
12 Use of hooding detainees, wilfully causing mental suffering, especially when
used for prolonged periods, or when combined with assault.
13 Use of dogs as a means of obtaining information authorised by US Defence
Secretary memo of 2 Dec 2002.
14 Forcing detainees to stand for many hours as a means of obtaining information
authorised by US Defence Secretary memo of 2 December 2002, and practised at
Abhu Ghraib and other US prisons.
15 Sexual and bodily humiliation of detainees, including rapes, and stripping
naked for long periods.
16 Aggressive patrolling with indiscriminate mass arrests of males, including 14
year olds, indiscriminate destruction of property, and invasion of women's'
quarters contrary to tenets of the Koran.
17 Killing and wounding treacherously by indiscriminate shooting at check
points, strafing of groups of obvious civilians, and disproportionate use of
force in residential areas.
18 Degrading treatment of detainees by marking foreheads and bodies with
indelible marker pens as a means of identification and control.
19 Use of cluster bombs on grounds of military expediency. As well as being
munitions causing random unnecessary suffering by steel spicules, incendiary and
depleted uranium bomblets, a large number don't explode, effectively becoming
land mines.
20 Use of depleted uranium shells, on the grounds of military expediency,
causing a very long term legacy of radioactive damage to the environment,
cancers and birth defects.
21 Use of white phosphorous (WP) chemical munitions.
22 Collective penalties in Fallujah during the first assault of April 2004 when
1,000 Iraqis including 600 women and children were killed.
23 Evacuation of Fallujah, ( a city nearly the size of Cardiff) in preparation
for a second disproportionate assault in November 2004, which employed the use
of starvation and thirst on an entire population, targeting of hospitals,
medical staff and ambulances, indiscriminate shooting of non combatants and
destruction of private and state property
24 Failure to keep a proper record of POW names and locations.
25 Failure to treat POWs humanely, especially those held in the open in the sun.
26 Abolition of Habeas Corpus: holding an estimated 30,000 prisoners without
charge or trial over an indefinite period:
27 Failure to record Iraqi deaths and injuries with consequent failure to
determine proportionality or medical requirements of survivors. Also causing
unnecessary suffering to relatives of the deceased.
28 Unilaterally holding that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to certain
actions, especially to the use of private security contractors, and mercenaries
and to the detention of certain types of enemy combatants.
EVIDENCE
Much of the evidence for these actions, which we believe are contrary to
International Law, are now in the public domain: for instance: The Secret memo
from David Manning to The Prime Minister dated 14 March 2002, The Confidential
and Personal memo from The British Ambassador to the USA to the Prime Minister
dated 18 March 2002. Clare Short's book "Honourable Deception" Greg Dyke's
"Inside Story", Robert Fisk's "The Great War for Civilisation", President
Chirac's interview of 10 March 2003, Hansard, the British Museum sponsored book
on the looting of Iraq's National Museum and use of Babylon as a US base, the
report on the destruction of "Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation" by Dahr
Jamail, Lee Gordon's eye witness account in 'Camden New Journal' of the shooting
up of ambulances in Fallujah, The Peacerights Report of the Inquiry into the
alleged Commission of War Crimes by Coalition Forces in The Iraq War During
2003", The Rumsfeld memo of 2 December 2003, gun film footage of the F16 strike
against civilians in Fallujah, photographs of mistreatment of POWs at Abhu
Ghraib.
More detailed evidence for all these atrocities will be provided by us if so
required.
Signed
Tony Benn,
7th December 2005
Letters in identical terms have been signed and
approved by those listed above.