International war crime tribunal accuses U.S. and Britain

The International Criminal Tribunal for Iraq held its first public hearing on July 17 in Kyoto, attended by 500 people.

In the opening speech, an Indian attorney stressed the importance of a hearing of this kind held in Japan, with its war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution.

A group of prosecutors consisting of attorneys from several countries condemned U.S. President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro for supporting and participating in the Iraq War.

The prosecutors accused Bush and Blair of carrying out preemptive attacks on Iraq in disregard of international law and United Nations resolutions, in particular, their indiscriminate strikes and the use of depleted uranium shells against Iraqi civilians.

The president of the Arab Lawyers Union and a Japanese journalist of Asia Press, a group of free-lance journalists, spoke about abuses of captives as well as genocide in Iraq.

Due to the absence of the accused, an amicus curaie made a statement in defense of the validity of U.S.-British attacks on the grounds that there were suspicions that the Saddam Hussein government had weapons of mass destruction.

The prosecutors' group refuted the amicus curaie based on the fact that the United States ad Britain launched strikes against Iraq while the weapons inspectors were still looking for WMDs and the reports of the U.S. and British investigation committees acknowledging that there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq.

The next hearing has been set for July 18. Several hearings will be held in different cities before the tribunal concludes its trial in December in Tokyo. The judge will pass sentence next March. (end)