Families' anger at long wait for Iraq answers

Relatives are desperately hoping the six million word report from the inquiry set up as far back as 2009 will bring the truth about the reasons for UK’s most controversial military engagement of the post-war era.

Thirteen years after British troops crossed into Iraq, Sir John Chilcot will finally deliver his verdict amid calls for former Prime Minister Tony Blair to be held to account including possible civil action by families of the dead and injured.

Peter Brierley, from Batley, whose son Shaun was one of the 179 Britons killed, said: This has been a long, long time coming so it is really just a sense of relief that it’s going to happen – although there have been so many occasions when we have been this close before and it’s been put back. The wait has been hard – when Chilcot was first announced, John Chilcot went round the country talking to bereaved families and I spoke to him in Manchester and he said to me this inquiry will be as full and as frank as it can be.

“He also said it will take a year and it may be that it stretches out to two years and I believed that, so every time it’s been knocked back you just have to wonder why it has been knocked back.”

Mr Brierley, who famously refused to shake the hand of Mr Blair and also spent thousands of pounds of his own money on attempts through the courts to force a public inquiry into the war’s legality, said it was not just about the soldiers who died but also the damage done to Iraq.

“They, and by they I mean the people in power in this country, didn’t want the inquiry to happen. The only reason it was held was public pressure and public opinion. We [the bereaved families] knew an inquiry was the only way we were going to get some answers so that’s why we have kept going and going and going.“

For John Hyde, the father of Yorkshire Red Cap Ben Hyde, 23, who was brutally murdered by a mob of Iraqi rioters, it has been an unrelenting 13-year wait for answers.

Mr Hyde, from Northallerton, said: “I don’t know if we will ever get any answers but I won’t stop trying. When Ben deployed, he had one plate of armour instead of three. He had no desert boots. The Army just wasn’t ready.”

Sir John said from the outset he would not rule on whether the invasion in 2003 was legal in terms of international law, but pledged to provide a “full and insightful” account of the decision-making process.

Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda has made clear that charges cannot be brought in relation to the use of military action as the court has no jurisdiction over the “crime of aggression”.

However, General Sir Michael Rose, who commanded British troops in Bosnia in the 1990s and has been advising the families of some of the British dead and injured, said they were preparing to launch a civil action against Mr Blair.

“He has a personal responsibility as leader of this country to properly assess the intelligence and information that he is using to justify going to war,” he said.

Some families have already dismissed the inquiry as a “whitewash” amid deep frustration at delays. The most serious delay has been bitter wrangling over the de-classification of documents - most notably communications between Mr Blair and US president George W Bush.

Soldier Simon Brown, 37, from Morley, who was shot in Basra, fears the report could place undue blame on rank and file soldiers.