Akhtar Raja
The appearance of Tony Blair still invokes fury in me as does the recent death by malnutrition and dehydration of a baby girl, Janan Saleh Al-Sakafi, in Gaza and the imminent death by starvation of 3,500 children while “290,000 children are on the brink of death”. How are the two connected? The former lay down a political precedent with state sanction for successive British prime ministers to help achieve the latter.
The British Guardian newspaper reported the recent emergence of Tony Blair with an “ill-conceived contribution to the climate debate.” His get up, the Tony Blair Institute, produced a report in which “Sir Tony Blair suggested that governments should dial down efforts to limit the use of fossil fuels….” This is an unwelcome statement made despite his organisation’s conflict of interest which “enthusiastically advise[s] the world’s largest oil producer….” Blair’s appearance in British politics brings with it a wider salutary reminder.
Tony Blair to this day attracts profound bitterness given his role in the Iraq war. He remains a symbol of pain, death, and destruction. Iraqis endured immense suffering under the food for oil programme, no fly zones, and relentless bombing together with the use of depleted uranium to contaminate the food chain and gene pool. Blair was part of the ‘shoulder to shoulder’ gang - united in their ‘hearts and minds.’ He introduced ‘shock and awe’ democracy. That necessitated setting Iraq alight.
Blair reminded me of, amongst other things, Iraq’s broken justice system and a case I had been involved in helping to defend a person sentenced to death. I appeared on one occasion in the same eerie courtroom where Saddam Hussein was tried and sentenced to death. A place where the invaders had set the stage for victor’s justice - a Broadway Halloweenesque show for the world to watch. The court complex located outside the Green Zone was so dangerous that our tooled up personal security detail was not prepared to enter. They said: “You’re on your own now.” The defence in my client’s case was quite simple: he was in an Iraqi prison at the time the crimes alleged against him were committed. The State’s own records proved this. My team and I also lobbied for clemency in the fraught corridors of power. The late giant of journalism, Robert Fisk, covered the story in the British Independent newspaper on 27 January 2014.
A Member of the Scottish Parliament, Ross Greer, said, “We may be 20 years on from one of the most immoral and disastrous foreign policy decisions ever taken by a UK Prime Minister, but the devastating effects are still being felt in Iraq and across the region…It is a grotesque injustice that the architects of this brutal invasion have yet to be held accountable”. In the meantime, Blair continues “amassing a fortune swanning around TV studios and picking up paycheques.” There were many cases in the UK arising out of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, but they failed to hold Blair to account.
A private war crimes prosecution against Blair in 2017 was blocked by the British High Court which ruled that there was no crime of aggression in English law even though it existed in international law. The crime needed to be introduced by Parliament for it to operate, and of course, it never was. The international crime of a war of aggression was accepted by the UK attorney general Sir Hartley Shawcross QC in the 1940s, at the time of the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war crimes. The UK however has put up guard rails domestically to give the likes of Blair, Starmer and Lammy refuge. In 2017 the head of the Iraq inquiry, Sir John Chilcot, accepted that Blair was not “straight with the nation”. The Chilcot report published in 2016 found that Saddam Hussein posed “no imminent threat” and the war was fought by relying on “flawed” intelligence.
An organisation, Defending Christian Arabs, pursued a case against Tony Blair in 2019 for administering a noxious substance (Depleted Uranium) during the 2003 invasion. The case was unsuccessful. The court held it did not have territorial jurisdiction and the case was vexatious. It seems to me these are occasions on which an inquisitorial (as opposed to adversarial) system of justice would be more effective getting to the truth. A court would have an investigatory role and the ability to explore wider facts. Alternatively, you could say cases which expose a state’s skulduggery are more likely to end in “a good old-fashioned stitch-up”, as Prince Harry recently described his court case challenging the government’s refusal to provide him with adequate security.
For Starmer the takeaway is that presiding over and participating in heinous criminal activity, openly or surreptitiously, is immune from accountability. The State will close in and protect him. He will escape punishment without consequence. He will get away scot-free. And on the contrary, in due course, he will be rewarded with more than a few suits, spectacles, and accommodation from a party donor.
Starmer’s government has faced legal challenges regarding its arms exports to Israel for use in Gaza. While some export licences have been suspended F-35 components continue to be provided to Israel. But the suspensions “came far too late… Israel has continued to commit atrocities in Gaza as the UK stands by, unwilling to act….” said Mark Smith, a former Foreign Office diplomat and policy advisor on arms sales who resigned in August 2024. He confirms “ministers can manipulate legal frameworks to shield “friendly” nations from accountability…allowing the most egregious crimes against humanity to take place…” The Guardian now reports that: “UK firms have exported thousands of military items including munitions to Israel despite the government suspending key arms export licences… former Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell [has called] for a full investigation, adding it was a resigning matter if the foreign secretary, David Lammy, was shown to have misled parliament…” Blair also misled parliament.
At home, Starmer leads a crackdown against student protests. They are being arrested and charged with criminal offences. Many are beinginvestigated and suspended or expelled from university. Police officers (some armed) storm meetings and conduct dawn raids. Starmer wants to criminalise protests and use existing laws and counter-terror measures. This has become a state led witch-hunt in which Israel retains an active interest. The Guardian reported on 29 April “The UK government shared contact details of counter-terrorism police and prosecutors with the Israeli embassy during an investigation into protests…”. Perhaps there is little hope therefore that British nationals who have fought with the IDF and committed war crimes will be prosecuted despite the evidence against them recently being submitted to the Metropolitan police. Doubtless the British intelligence agencies have knowledge about the participation of British nationals in war crimes and genocide.
In the meantime, the British foreign Secretary held a secret meeting with Israeli Foreign minister last month in UK while Britain’s Royal Air Force continue to fly hundreds of spy missions from Cyprus over Gaza to support Israel’s onslaught.
Domestically, Starmer’s government pursues policies against impoverished children, the elderly struggling with fuel bills and disabled people with the result that his government suffered a historical hiding in local elections across England earlier this month at the hands of a far-right party. But what of the government’s foreign policy?
Whether it is the American Neocon’s ‘Greater Middle East’ plan or the Zionist ‘Greater Israel’ which requiremilitary interventionism they are both inspirationally shared goals with Israel. General Wesley Clark described a five-year plan after 9/11 to attack seven Muslim countries: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan.
While UK remains fully devoted to Israel, thinks it has a special relationship with the US and has unshakeable colonial fever, Muslims remain expendable. The instinctive cruelty of successive British governments helps it support Israel and lay hands on booty lying in Muslim lands while it economically crumbles internally.
So, should Starmer quit government and go back to the Bar? Should he roll up his sleeves and get drafting: not his own defence (because he does not have one) but a plea agreement. Not for now. Starmer seems safe under the Blair precedent.
— Akhtar Raja is a British lawyer based in London and Principal of Quist Solicitors.
