He told the Lords that although they believed they could prove the Official Secrets Act had been breached, they had concluded they could not disprove Mrs Gun’s defence “of necessity". In the House of Lords Goldsmith denied any “political interference” in the decision to drop the case, but acknowledged that their problem was Gun’s “defence of necessity”. Also there have been several efforts to bring a prosecution in the International Criminal Court against Blair and his entire government for war crimes in relation to Iraq. Politically it would be extremely damaging, given that the war was hugely unpopular and repeated attempts to defuse criticism-such as Lord Hutton’s inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly and the upcoming inquiry into supposed “intelligence failures” under Lord Butler-have failed to do so. Prime Minister Tony Blair’s own position is threatened by a verdict that the war against Iraq was carried out illegally. He has a clear interests in not allowing a discussion on the veracity of his legal advice, but he is not alone. It was Goldsmith who directed the Crown Prosecution Service to abandon the prosecution-several weeks after giving consent for it. The government has insisted that it will not publish Goldsmiths advice “in view of a longstanding convention, adhered to by successive governments, that advice of law officers is not publicly disclosed.” He had suggested that United Nations Resolution 678, which authorised force to remove Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 1990, could be used to justify a new war against Iraq. Goldsmith is the government’s top legal official and a cabinet minister. James Welch, Gun’s lawyer who works for the civil rights organisation Liberty, said the final decision to abandon the case was taken after they had warned the prosecution that they would demand the disclosure of Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith’s advice on the legality of the war. The last thing the British government could contemplate is a trial in which more evidence would come out confirming that its war against Iraq was illegal. Most importantly, it would have raised questions regarding the legality of the war and the pretext on which the American and British governments justified beginning unprovoked hostilities against Iraq. There are a number of political considerations that are central to why the trial has been abandoned. War’s legality would have been questioned That the British government was forced into such a humiliating climb down can only mean that Gun’s claims are true. The resolution was supported by four UNSC countries-the US, Britain, Spain and Bulgaria-and opposed by five countries-Russia, China, France, Germany and Syria. ![]() The memo came from the US National Security Agency and asked the British government to help with covert operations against six United Nations Security Council (UNSC) delegations-Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan-that were undecided on a draft resolution authorising war with Iraq. Gun said she leaked the memo because it “exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the US Government who attempted to subvert our own security services” and hoped that she could “prevent wide-scale death and casualties among ordinary Iraqi people and UK forces in the course of an illegal war.” The trial of Katharine Gun, the British intelligence officer who leaked a secret memo about joint United States/United Kingdom spying at the United Nations last year, has collapsed.Īddressing Judge Michael Hyam at the Central Criminal Court on February 25, the prosecution said it could “offer no evidence” against Gun and that it was “not appropriate to give reasons” why it had abandoned the case.
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