Last night George Monbiot, of the Guardian, called for civilians to conduct non-violent citizens arrest’s on Tony Blair for taking the UK to war with Iraq which many have condemned as a criminal act of aggression (see George Monbiot’s article here).
In addition he has set up a website where cash is donated to pool a bounty, a quarter of which will be paid to members of the public that attempt peaceful citizens arrest’s on Tony Blair for crimes against peace (arrestblair.org). At the time of publishing this article, the bounty has gathered to £3783.00 in a matter of days.
Monbiot’s thought provoking article cites, as Blair was made aware, that “Under the United Nations charter, two conditions must be met before a war can legally be waged. The parties to a dispute must first “seek a solution by negotiation” (article 33). They can take up arms without an explicit mandate from the UN security council only “if an armed attack occurs against [them]” (article 51). Neither of these conditions applied. The US and UK governments rejected Iraq’s attempts to negotiate. At one point the US state department even announced that it would “go into thwart mode” to prevent the Iraqis from resuming talks on weapons inspection (all references are on my website). Iraq had launched no armed attack against either nation.”
If there was no legal justification for going to war, then the thousands of Iraqi people that have died since they were invaded by Blair, Bush and their war machine, were actually victims of mass murder.
Although the Chilcot Inquiry is currently looking at the war in Iraq, as Monbiot points out, “there’s a problem with official inquiries in the United Kingdom: the government appoints their members and sets their terms of reference. It’s the equivalent of a criminal suspect being allowed to choose what the charges should be, who should judge his case and who should sit on the jury”.
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