Date:12/02/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/02/12/stories/2008021255671300.htm

International

Mothers of killed soldiers question war

Hasan Suroor

LONDON: The British government, which has doggedly rejected calls for an independent inquiry into its decision to invade Iraq, will come under fresh pressure when Law Lords — Britain’s highest court — take up an appeal by mothers of two soldiers who were killed in Iraq.

Law Lords convene only rarely and their decision to hear the case is seen to be politically significant.

Rose Gentle and Beverly Clarke whose sons — Gordon Gentle and David Clarke (both 19) — lost their lives want the Law Lords to order the government to set up an inquiry to establish whether it took sufficient steps to make sure that the war was legal.

They contend that the war was illegal and the government was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights which obliges its signatories to take reasonable steps to ensure that their soldiers do not face the risk of death except in lawful military activities.

Their case was rejected by the Court of Appeal on grounds that it was not for them to decide whether the government had acted lawfully in sending troops to Iraq.

According to their solicitor Phil Shiner, the government failed in its duty to provide the two soldiers with the proper equipment and take all reasonable steps to protect their lives. Gentle was killed by a roadside bomb in 2004 while Clark died in “friendly fire” in 2003. At the inquest into Gentle’s death, the coroner noted that he might have survived if his vehicle had been equipped with bomb-disabling equipment.

His mother said: “It’s really important to us to find out why my son was sent there and why he was killed in this right equipment, we believe they should never have been there in the first place.”