Iraq war inquiry not required under ECHR
10 Apr 08
Law Lords dismiss mothers' legal battle to find out reasons behind Iraq invasion
The House of Lords has dismissed an attempt by two mothers of soldiers killed in the Iraq war to force a public inquiry into the way in which the government obtained legal advice before embarking on the invasion.
Rose Gentle of Glasgow and Beverley Clarke from Staffordshire, who each lost a son in the conflict, had argued that Tony Blair's government failed to ensure in advance that the invasion of Iraq was lawful and jusitfied. Lawyers for the two argued that the government owed a duty to soldiers to ensure that invasions were lawful because they were putting those soldiers' lives at risk.
The case was brought against Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Defence Secretary Des Browne and the Attorney General Baroness Scotland. The two women were challenging a Court of Appeal ruling in 2006 that the government was not obliged to order an independent inquiry into the war to comply with the protection of the right to life in article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Mrs Clarke and Mrs Gentle wanted to know why 13 pages of "equivocal" advice from the then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith had been reduced to one page of unequivocal advice that an invasion was legal.
However, a committee of nine law lords - usually a panel of five hears appeals - dismissed their appeal.
The senior judge, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, whose reasons many of the panel adopted, said that in signing the European Convention "I find it impossible to conceive that the proud sovereign states of Europe could ever have contemplated binding themselves legally to establish an independent public enquiry into the process by which a decision might have been made to commit the state’s armed forces to war."
In response to the argument that a failure to ensure the invasion was legal was a "substantial and operative cause" of the two soldiers' deaths, Lord Hope of Craighead said: "Crucially, the issue as to the legality of the invasion in international law has nothing to do with the state’s obligation under article 2(1) of the Convention to protect the servicemen and women within its jurisdiction."
He added that it was no more relevant to article 2(1) than the question whether the invasion had the approval of the Cabinet or Parliament.
Lord Hope said that the appellants' case failed at the first hurdle because the only question the Attorney General was concerned with was whether the invasion was lawful in international law. "That question as such is not... reviewable in the domestic courts. Nor can it be linked to the state’s obligations under article 2(1)."
Mrs Gentle, whose son Gordon died in June 2004 in a roadside bomb attack, said she was disappointed with the ruling and that she would never accept that her son died for a just cause.
Follow the link to read the Lords' decision.