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London: Britain's highest court on Wednesday rejected a call from the mothers of two teenage soldiers killed in Iraq for a public inquiry into the legality of the war.
Rose Gentle and Beverley Clarke had argued that an inquiry should be held to judge whether ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair acted lawfully in sending troops to the 2003 US-led invasion.
Lawyers for the women had argued that questions still surround the legal advice given to the government as it made a case for war. The attorney general at the time, Peter Goldsmith, had first advised Blair that he had doubts about the legality of war in a provisional 13-page document in March 2003. But within 10 days, in a final, single-page statement, Goldsmith gave an unequivocal view that military action was justified under existing United Nations resolutions.
Clarke's son, trooper David Clarke, died in March 2003 in a so-called friendly-fire incident close to the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Fusilier Gordon Gentle died in June 2004 in a roadside bomb attack on a British convoy in Basra.
Claim
Their parents had argued that an inquiry must be carried out, under the terms of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the "right to life". But a committee of nine Law Lords at the House of Lords, Britain's highest court, ruled against the women. Britain's High Court and Court of Appeal had previously dismissed their claim. The Law Lords said lawyers had failed to prove that the European convention applied to the case.
"There is no basis for any inquiry into the circumstances of the sad deaths," the Lords said in a written ruling.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said there will be an inquiry after all British troops have returned home.
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