Documents relating to the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) examination of alleged war crimes by British forces in Iraq between 2003 and 2009.
The ICC first received communications from lawyers and human rights groups in 2004, when allegations of British war crimes in Iraq started to emerge. The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) opened a preliminary examination shortly after, but this was closed in 2006 with a finding that the allegations, though credible, did not meet the Court’s gravity requirement due to the low number of cases.
In January 2014, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), alongside British law firm Public Interest Lawyers, submitted a fresh communication to the ICC requesting a new investigation. Seeking to demonstrate that the situation in Iraq met the Court’s gravity threshold, the 250-page document contained war crimes allegations from 109 individuals, alongside contentions that the abuse was systemic amongst British forces.
A second preliminary examination was undertaken by the OTP, this time lasting for six years. In 2020, a decision was taken that these allegations were sufficiently grave to justify an ICC investigation. However, this time the OPT found that the Court’s other requirement – complementarity – had not been met. The ICC only has jurisdiction over cases in which state officials are unwilling or unable to investigate themselves, and in this case, the OTP judged that the UK’s raft of accountability mechanisms, including individual service police investigations, the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, and the Iraq Fatality Investigations, were adequately thorough. This decision not to progress to a full investigation was criticised harshly by a number of legal scholars and NGOs.
This collection includes communications to the ICC, preliminary examination reports, and correspondence regarding the investigation.
