High Court blocks bid to prosecute Tony Blair over Iraq War

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 62%. (I'm a bot)

The High Court has blocked a bid by a former chief of staff of the Iraqi army to bring a private prosecution against Tony Blair over the Iraq War.

General Abdul Wahed Shannan Al Rabbat has accused Mr Blair of committing a "Crime of aggression" by invading Iraq in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

He lives in Muscat, Oman, does not possess a passport and travel to the UK. His lawyers asked London's High Court for permission to seek judicial review in an attempt to get the Supreme Court, now the highest court in the land, to overturn a ruling by the House of Lords in 2006 that there is no such crime as the crime of aggression under the law of England and Wales.

Mr Mansfield argued that the international crime of a war of aggression had been accepted by then UK attorney general Sir Hartley Shawcross QC in the 1940s, at the time of the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war crimes.

The QC contended that, as the international community had held those responsible for the Second World War to account by prosecuting those thought responsible for aggression at Nuremberg, it was the duty of the UK courts to follow that example in relation to the Iraq War.

The High Court ruled: "In our opinion there is no prospect of the Supreme Court holding that the decision in Jones was wrong or the reasoning no longer applicable."

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