ISTANBUL, June 27: The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI), an anti-war grouping of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), intellectuals and writers, on Monday harshly, if symbolically, condemned the United States, Britain and their allies for the occupation of Iraq. The tribunal recommended ‘an exhaustive investigation of those responsible for crimes of aggression and crimes against humanity in Iraq’.

After three days of deliberations, it singled out President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair along with government officials from other coalition partners as being primarily culpable for the invasion.

The tribunal, the purpose of which was to document the case against the invasion, did not consider the argument in favour of the US-led intervention in Iraq, and had no judicial status.

The statement, read by Indian author Arundhati Roy, chair of the tribunal’s ‘Jury of Conscience’, called for an ‘immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the coalition forces in Iraq’.

Ms Roy, who won the Booker Prize in Britain in 1997 for her novel, ‘The God of Small Things’, told a news conference that ‘our aim is to have the US and British forces out of Iraq’, but conceded that this ‘will not happen tomorrow’.

Ms Roy also called on the US to immediately close down its prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and demanded a review of all treaties signed with post-invasion Iraq, which she said ‘should be considered null and void’.

The WTI criticized the United Nations for having, it said, failed properly to manage the Iraqi crisis.

It also pointed a finger at a number of US firms active in Iraq, such as Halliburton, Carlyle, Boeing and Texaco. It recommended ‘that people throughout the world launch action against US and UK corporations that directly profit from this war’.

The generally studious crowd of participants broke into a chant of ‘The people united will never be defeated’ – an avatar of left-wing Latin American liberation struggles — as the tribunal’s closing statement was being read.

It also erupted in applause after hearing testimony on Saturday from Iraqi women’s rights activist Hana Ibrahim.

Hana Ibrahim spoke of the damage inflicted by the invasion and the occupation on the women of Iraq, with a proliferation of prostitution rings and the near-total exclusion of women from public life.

During the proceedings, about 50 experts and witnesses, from jurists to former soldiers and victims of the conflict, testified before the jury and the participants to demonstrate the illegality of the invasion.

Testimony included technical reports, such as one pointing to an upsurge in cases of leukaemia among the children of Basra after the 1991 invasion, and accounts, backed by pictures and documents, of alleged torture and ‘collective punishment’ inflicted on civilians in such trouble spots as Fallujah.—AFP