The British attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, warned less than two weeks before the invasion of Iraq that military action could be ruled illegal.
The government was so concerned that it might be prosecuted that it set up a team of lawyers to prepare for legal action in an international court.
And a parliamentary answer issued days before the war in the name of Lord Goldsmith -- but presented by ministers as his official opinion before the crucial Commons vote -- was drawn up in Prime Minister Tony Blair's office in Downing Street, not in the attorney general's chambers.
The full picture of how the government manipulated the legal justification for war, and political pressure placed on its most senior law officer, was revealed in the London-based Guardian newspaper yesterday.
It appears that Lord Goldsmith never wrote an unequivocal formal legal opinion that the invasion was lawful, as demanded by Lord Boyce, chief of defense staff at the time.
In her letter of resignation in protest against the war, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office, described the planned invasion of Iraq as a "crime of aggression."
She said she could not agree to military action in circumstances she described as "so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."
Her uncompromising comments, and disclosures about Lord Goldsmith's relations with ministers in the run-up to war, appear in a book by Philippe Sands, a QC in the Matrix chambers of Blair's wife, Cherie Booth, and professor of international law at University College London.
Lord Goldsmith warned Blair in a document on March 7, 2003 that the use of force against Iraq could be illegal. It would be safer to have a second UN resolution explicitly sanctioning military action.
"So concerned was the government about the possibility of such a case that it took steps to put together a legal team to prepare for possible international litigation," Sands wrote.
The government has refused to publish the March 7 document. It was circulated to only a very few senior ministers. All Lord Goldsmith gave the Cabinet was a later oral presentation of a parliamentary answer issued under his name on March 17.
This appears contrary to the official ministerial code, which states that the complete text of opinions by the government's law officers should be seen by the full Cabinet.
On March 13, 2003, Lord Goldsmith told Lord Falconer, then a Home Office minister, and Baroness Morgan, Blair's director of political and government relations, that he believed an invasion would, after all, be legal without a new UN security council resolution, according to Sands.
On March 17, in response to a question from Baroness Ramsay, a Labour peer, Lord Goldsmith stated that it was "plain" Iraq continued to be in material breach of UN resolution 1441.
"Plain to whom?" Sands asks. It is clear, he says, that Lord Goldsmith's answer was "neither a summary nor a precis of any of the earlier advices which the attorney general had provided."
He adds: "The March 17 statement does not seem to have been accompanied by a formal and complete legal opinion or advice in the usual sense, whether written by the attorney general, or independently by a barrister retained by him."
A spokeswoman for Lord Goldsmith said yesterday: "The attorney has said on many occasions he is not going to discuss process issues."
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the UN, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and Senegal’s Macky Sall are each to face grillings by 193 member states and non-governmental organizations for three hours today and tomorrow. It is only the second time the UN has held a public question-and-answer, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency. Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the
South Korea’s air force yesterday apologized for a 2021 midair collision involving two fighter jets, a day after auditors said the pilots were taking selfies and filming during the flight and held them responsible for the accident. “We sincerely apologize to the public for the concern caused by the accident that occurred in 2021,” an air force spokesman told a news conference, adding that one of the pilots involved had been suspended from flying duties, received severe disciplinary action and has since left the military. The apology followed a report released on Wednesday by the South Korean Board of Audit and Inspection,
An earthquake registering a preliminary magnitude of 7.7 off northern Japan on Monday prompted a short-lived tsunami alert and the advisory of a higher risk of a possible mega-quake for coastal areas there. The Cabinet Office and the Japan Meteorological Agency said there was a 1% chance for a mega-quake, compared to a 0.1% chance during normal times, in the next week or so following the powerful quake near the Chishima and Japan trenches. Officials said the advisory was not a quake prediction but urged residents in 182 towns along the northeastern coasts to raise their preparedness while continuing their daily lives. Prime
About 240 Indians claiming descent from a Biblical tribe landed at Tel Aviv airport on Thursday as part of a government operation to relocate them to Israel. The newcomers passed under a balloon arch in blue and white, the colors of the Israeli flag, as dozens of well-wishers welcomed them with a traditional Jewish song. They were the first “bnei Menashe” (“sons of Manasseh”) to arrive in Israel since the government in November last year announced funding for the immigration of about 6,000 members of the community from the states of Manipur and Mizoram in northeast India. The community claims to descend from
RSS