ElBaradei urges ICC trial of Bush

Former US President George W. Bush (R) and his Vice President Dick Cheney

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/176217.html

Former IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei says former US President George W. Bush and his administration's officials should be put on trial in the "International Criminal Court" (ICC) for waging war on Iraq.

ElBaradei in a new memoir, "The Age of Deception," says that the Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for the "shame of a needless war" in Iraq.

He accused then-President George Bush and his administration officials of "grotesque distortion" in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq with an excuse to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

The so-called hunt for WMD in Iraq, however, yielded no results.

The then US administration claimed that Iraq possessed WMD despite contrary evidence collected by ElBaradei's and other arms inspectors inside the country.

ElBaradei, who was the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1997 to 2009, says his inspectors in Iraq have found certain aluminum tubes that were designed for artillery rockets, not for uranium enrichment equipment to build nuclear bombs, as Washington claimed.

He reported the conclusion to the UN Security Council on January 27, 2003, and yet on the next day Bush, in a "remarkable" response, delivered a State of the Union address in which he repeated the unfounded claim about aluminum tubes, ElBaradei wrote.

ElBaradei called the invasion of Iraq "aggression where there was no imminent threat," and suggested that international courts should investigate it as a possible war crime.

"Should not the International Criminal Court investigate whether this constitutes a 'war crime' and determine who is accountable?" the former IAEA chief stated.

ElBaradei wrote that the Iraq war taught him that "deliberate deception was not limited to small countries ruled by ruthless dictators."