At the High Court on Wednesday 6th May at 10.30 Chris Coverdale of the Campaign to Make Wars History made appeal in an oral hearing to have overturned the court’s decision to refuse a judicial review of the decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to drop criminal proceedings against Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon, Lord Goldsmith and other members of the British Government for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes, against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Details of the Court Proceedings are provided here.

In upholding the DPP's contention that there was insufficient evidence for a ‘real prospect’ of conviction Lord Justice Keane took issue with the contention that Tony Blair's statement “so we’re killing more of them than they are of us that’s brilliant actually” indicates intent to commit genocide by asserting that "‘Them’ refers to people who are killing UK soldiers". Given that over 80% of those killed by coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have been civilians who are not involved in "killing UK soldiers" this is a point of contention and not really one that the judge should decide summarily at this stage. In focussing on this point the judge appeared to dismiss all other evidence provided by Chris, both in the court and in the document Chris provided, of which Mr Justice Roderick Evans later said "It has not been possible to do a full reading".

Given that there is evidence already available in the public domain sufficient to convince a large proportion of the general public that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were initiated illegaly and on fraudulent grounds and that the conduct of the war entailed many other war crimes and crimes against humanity it seems highly inappropriate for the DPP to drop charges on the grounds of lack of evidence and still further, for the courts to reject application for judicial review of the decision.

Mr Justice Roderick Evans referred to two tests of the evidence applied by the DPP, the first, already mentioned being sufficient evidence and the second being "Is it in the public interest to bring the case?" . The judges have made no other reference to this consideration.

The laws of war were established after WW1, applied to WW2 and later consolidated and developed because in the course of those events millions of people died or suffered in the horrors of those two wars. Given that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have undermined the very foundations of those laws and that there is widespread feeling among the communities, not just of the UK, but of the wider world, that the perpetrators of serious crimes against international law have walked away from these crimes with impunity, it is quite unreasonable that this consideration appears to have received no attention at all.

In summing up Lord Justice Keane said "I agree, the war in Iraq is controversial. Mr Coverdale is against it. Some think it justified. The Court’s remit is limited; issues of war, the legality or not thereof are political therefore non-justiciable" echoing the earlier remarks of Mr Justice Roderick Evans that "Decisions of war are such that the Court will not intervene (prerogative matter)". I was shocked and disappointed to hear these remarks from judges of the High Court. International laws carried into UK law by treaty obligations prohibit aggressive war but the judges think that the legality of war is political and the courts should not intervene. There seems here to be a lack of intellectual clarity that I would not have expected of men of their standing. One has to question the purpose of laws when judges may choose to ignore the arbitrary decisions of law enforcement authorities not to enforce them by abdicating their own responsibilities with the equally arbitrary words "not justicable".