war crimes

Following NATO's victory over Yugoslavia and occupation of Kosovo, there then transpired the "largest ethnic cleaning in the Balkans [in proportionate terms]" (Jan Oberg), with some 150,000 Serbs put to flight along with thousands of Roma—with thousands of Roma suffering the loss of houses torched by the returning Kosovo Albanians. All this was done under NATO authority.

In March 2004, the press reported that the UK had signed a new bilateral extradition treaty [with the US], and given the US an undertaking that any person extradited from the US to the UK would not be surrendered to the ICC.

A letter from David Blunkett, the British Home Secretary, to John Ashcroft, the US Attorney General, states: 'the UK would contest any request from the ICC for each surrender, as being incompatible with Article 98 (2) of the Statute of the ICC'.

In late September 1991, over 120 Gospic Serbs, including prominent professors and judges, were abducted and murdered, their bodies destroyed or hidden.

...this was the first massacre carried out as a deliberate act of ethnic cleansing, designed to frighten the Serb population of Croatia into fleeing. Yet it was ignored by the world's media. The name of Gospic never became part of the litany of atrocities repeated by news media covering Yugoslav wars.

Before the war, Gordon Brown set aside £1 billion for war spending. As of late 2007, the UK had spent an estimated £7 billion in direct operating expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan (76 per cent of it in Iraq). This includes money from a supplemental “special reserve”, plus additional spending from the Ministry of Defence...

Based on assumptions set out in our book, the budgetary cost to the UK of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2010 will total more than £18 billion. If we include the social costs, the total impact on the UK will exceed £20 billion.

The language of resolution 1441 leaves the position unclear ...Arguments can be made on both sides... I accept that a reasonable case can be made that resolution 1441 is capable in principle of reviving the authorisation in 678 without a further resolution... but a "reasonable case" does not mean that if the matter ever came before a court I would be confident that the court would agree with this view.

I judge that, having regard to the arguments on both sides, and considering the resolution as a whole in the light of the statements made on adoption and subsequently, a court might well conclude that OPs 4 and 12 do require a further Council decision in order to revive the authorisation in resolution 678. But equally I consider that the counter view can be reasonably maintained.'