There is a \u201creasonable basis\u201d to believe that British soldiers committed war crimes against detainees during the Iraq conflict between 2004 and 2008, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has revealed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
There is a \u201creasonable basis\u201d to believe that British soldiers committed war crimes against detainees during the Iraq conflict between 2004 and 2008, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has revealed.<\/p>\n
The Hague-based ICC presented a 74-page report on preliminary inquiries to the annual assembly of states parties, which participate in the jurisdiction of the court, on Monday, in New York.<\/p>\n
Bensouda said that following a thorough factual and legal assessment of the available information, the prosecutor\u2019s office believes \u201cthat there is reasonable basis to believe\u201d that members of the UK armed forces \u201ccommitted war crimes\u201d against persons in their custody and thus related \u201cto the context of arrests and detentions.\u201dBritish troops have not been involved in war crimes on the battlefield, the report noted, however.<\/p>\n
During the ICC\u2019s previous preliminary investigation into similar allegations back in 2006, the Court said there was a \u201creasonable basis to believe that crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court had been committed, namely willful killing and inhuman treatment.\u201d The court decided to take no action because of the \u201climited number\u201d of serious crimes allegations.<\/p>\n
In 2014, the ICC prosecutor reopened an investigation into war crimes allegations after Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) said that the \u201cUK personnel committed systematically and on a large scale war crimes of torture and related ill-treatment\u201d against at least 1,071 Iraqi detainees pursuant to the UK government\u2019s \u201cdeliberate policy of abuse\u201d of Iraqi detainees in the period from March 2003 through to December 2008 on the territory of Iraq.<\/p>\n
The rights groups also said that the British personnel committed at least 52 cases of unlawful killings against persons in their custody in Iraq during the same period.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a \u201creasonable basis\u201d to believe that British soldiers committed war crimes against detainees during the Iraq conflict between 2004 and 2008, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has revealed. \u00a0 \u00a0 There is a \u201creasonable basis\u201d to believe that British soldiers committed war crimes against detainees during the Iraq conflict …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":15855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_108372464460192_245495985553329":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[831,459,855,338],"class_list":["post-5150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-islam","tag-british","tag-international","tag-soldier","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"\n