Richard Drax, MP for South Dorset, today called in Parliament for protection for servicemen and women from “fabrications and fantasies” cooked up by unscrupulous lawyers on behalf of alleged Iraqi victims, saying,
“If we in this place send our brave men and women to war, we have got to protect them... when they come back.”
During Wednesday’s debate on the Chilcot Inquiry report, Drax reminded the House that, “During the now former Prime Minister’s response to the publication of the report of the Chilcot inquiry on 6 July, I asked for his assurance that, just as there would be no recriminations against those who sent our armed forces to war, so there would be none against our armed forces themselves. He replied: “We are doing everything we can to get through and knock down these wholly unjustified inquiries, because by and large, as we would expect, British forces behaved entirely properly.””
However, Drax said, “The fact remains... that in an official statement to The Sunday Telegraph on 2 July, the International Criminal Court confirmed that it had already begun a preliminary examination of claims of torture and abuse by British soldiers after receiving a dossier from human rights lawyers acting for alleged Iraqi victims. The ICC prosecutors will comb through the 2.3 million words in the report for the evidence of war crimes committed by British troops.”
“Many of us have already put on record how deeply disturbing we find the relentless pursuit of our servicemen and women by unscrupulous and opportunistic lawyers,” said Drax. “In my view, it is a disgrace.”
Citing the most recent figures from the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), he added that of the 59 allegations of unlawful killing dealt with so far by IHAT, 56 were “found to be not sustainable, meaning that there was no truth in them.”