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,
Baroness Dr Jenny Tonge, Roger Lloyd Pack, Actor, Jehane Markham
Writer, Vanessa Redgrave, Adam Price MP, Bill Paterson, Angela Flowers,
Ken Loach, Dr Eric Herring, John McDonnel MP, Paul Mackney General
Secretary NATFHE, Martin Rowson Cartoonist, Michael Gambon,
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.
In support:
Ricky Thamman, Randolph Riddle (USA), Timothy Pinney, Mark McGovern,
Roger Nettleship, Niall Taylor, Tony Dowling, Richard Wilson, Philip
Challinor, Susan Pishgar (USA), Theodore Turner, Damuel Rowlands,
Charles Jenks (US), Averil Parkinson, James Williams, Andrew Seal,
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
