Former Prime Minister Tony Blair should face trial over the Iraq war in 2003, Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn said yesterday.
Speaking on BBC Newsnight, Corbyn said: “We went into a war that was catastrophic, that was illegal, that cost us a lot of money, that lost a lot of lives, and the consequences are still played out with migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, refugees all over the region.”
When asked whether Blair should stand trial on war charges, Corbyn said: “If he’s committed a war crime, yes. Everyone who’s committed a war crime should be.
“I think it was an illegal war, I’m confident about that, indeed (former UN secretary general) Kofi Annan confirmed it was an illegal war, and therefore he has to explain to that.
“Is he going to be tried for it, I don’t know. Could he be tried for it? Possibly.”
Corbyn called for the Chilcot report, an inquiry into Britain’s role in the Iraq War, to come out as soon as possible.
He said: “The Chilcot report is going to come out sometime. I hope it comes out soon. I think there are some decisions Tony Blair has got to confess or tell us what actually happened. What happened in Crawford, Texas, in 2002 in his private meetings with George [W] Bush.
“Why has the Chilcot report still not come out because – apparently there is still debate about the release of information on one side or the other of the Atlantic. At that point Tony Blair and the others that have made the decisions are then going to have to deal with the consequences of it.”
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