BB FANS

Tuesday May 3, 12:15 PM

Families of dead soldiers plan to sue Blair
LONDON (Reuters) - The families of British soldiers who died in Iraq will launch a bid to take Prime Minister Tony Blair to court on Tuesday over his "deception" in going to war.

Two days before the election, the families will deliver a letter to Downing Street outlining the legal case they will bring against the Prime Minister.

The question of Blair's integrity and his decision to back the United States in invading Iraq has dominated the last two weeks of the election campaign.

On Monday, the wife of the latest soldier to be killed directly blamed Blair for his death.

"It's Tony Blair's fault," the widow of Anthony Wakefield said of his death in a roadside bomb attack in southern Iraq.

"He sent all those troops out. He shouldn't have done it."

Eight families who lost servicemen in Iraq are backing the bid to take Blair and the government to court under the European Convention of Human Rights and they are also considering a private prosecution against the prime minister.

The Military Families Against The War group said they had been advised by senior legal counsel that Blair had a case to answer and described the war as "a crime of aggression".

A spokesman for the group said their campaign was gathering support all the time.

They will deliver their letter to Downing Street at 4 p.m.

At this point I would like to clearly state how sorry I am for this family

However someone should jump in and stop them airing their rawness in the papers in such a political way.

A soldier by definition takes the queens shilling to bare arms and brave dangers; it wouldn’t be much of an army otherwise

My ex husband is a soldier. He chose to go in the army and part of that is the risk of going to war at any time in his army career or other work related risks. While I think it is a tragedy that soldiers were killed in the war (in fact a local lad was killed having just left our village college to join up!) I do not think that families have the right to sue for the reasons stated above. They have my utmost sympathy in their grief but soldiers know what they are doing when they sign up and go through pretty rigorous training with the option to leave. Going to war is an awful situation to be in but then so is fire fighting and other high risk jobs. This suing has to end somewhere imo

There seems to be a lot of so-called 'Legal Experts' willing to try to get a case going on the basis of "Sue now Pay later".

They con the families into thinking there is a pot of money awaiting them but there is NOT, only a load of GREIF

they're quite right to sue blair, someone got to pin him down on his illegal act of was. tony blair should be standing in a dock charged with war crimes. he was happy to send other peoples children off to their death, would he have sent his own?

I agree with HC on this one

A very emotive yet flawed statement mr Hippo.

Since when do wars need to be legal and by whose laws

Blair is a democratically elected leader who despite the view of some of him will inevitable stay in power.

The war in Iraq was in build up for years and it was obvious that eventually a war would come giving plenty of time for any army personal to leave the army or buy themselves out if they didn’t agree with their pay, master

Since when does a soldier declare he has a right to decide if he fights or not

No this is no more than evil politicians and reporters exploiting a may badly advised lady who is in grief

how did you manage to get through all that with hardly any spelling mistakes?

god knows

Based on the information available at the time (although with hindsight we now know it to be very flawed) I think any leader felt it the right thing to do. At the time all the major parties were unanimous in their support of the war. It was a war situation. When you're in the army you follow orders. If they tell you there's a war on you go off and fight - wherever that may be and whatever the rights and wrongs of it, it's your job.