Blair could stand trial for war crimes: Leadership candidate

The front runner of the leadership campaign for Britain’s Labour Party has said Tony Blair could be made to stand trial for war crimes, newspaper The Independent has reported.

Left winger Jeremy Corbyn said in an interview he believed Blair was reaching a stage where he would have to ‘deal with the consequences of his actions’ as the release of Chilcot inquiry report approached.

Speaking on the BBC’s newsnight program, he said: “I think it was an illegal war,” adding that this had already been confirmed by the U.N. secretary general. And he said that the former UK prime minister needed to explain this.

Corbyn, who opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003, said: “We went into a war that was catastrophic, that was illegal, that cost us a lot of money, that lost a lot of lives.”

Labour Party leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn is seen appearing on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show in this photograph received via the BBC in London July 26, 2015. REUTERS/Jeff Overs/BBC/Handout via Reuters

He said the consequences of the war were still being played out with the countless migrant deaths in the Mediterranean.

Asked if Blair should be charged with war crimes and therefore tried – he said it might be possible, but that he did not know if it would happen.

Asked if he should be tried Corbyn replied: “If he’s committed a war crime, yes. Everyone who's committed a war crime should be.”

His comments are likely to inflate the ongoing feud between the two after Blair warned against Corbyn being elected to the leadership of the Labour Party - describing him as ‘old fashioned’ and joked that he was the preference of the Conservatives – suggesting that Labour would lose another general election under his leadership.