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21 July 2016 / Dr Jon Robins
Issue: 7708 / Categories: Opinion
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In contempt

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Chilcot delivered a scathing review of the actions of Tony Blair & his government, but what happens next, asks Jon Robins

“Will Tony Blair end up in the Hague? Will he have to share a cell with Slobodan Milosevic? Do you think his wife might take the case?”, quipped comedian Mark Thomas in January 2003 to the lawyer Phil Shiner. The unlikely pair had just been to Number 10 to hand-deliver a “letter before action” on Tony Blair warning the then prime minister he could be prosecuted for war crimes.

Unstoppable rush to war

At the time I was reporting on a growing transatlantic movement of lawyers trying to halt what seemed to be an unstoppable rush to war. In the US the leading human rights lawyer Michael Ratner had secured the signatures of 100 leading law professors in one day to support his letter to George Bush warning of the legal ramifications of military action.

“To many people in the world this is an unwarranted war,” Ratner told me. The lawyer, who went on to challenge detention without trial at Guantanamo (and represent Julian Assange and

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