Chilcot report: Iraq war families crowdfund legal costs

Families of some of the British troops killed in Iraq have launched a public crowdfunding appeal to pay for lawyers to potentially sue those responsible.

The Iraq War Families Campaign Group wants to raise £150,000 to fund legal work, including analysing the 12-volume Chilcot report on the Iraq war inquiry, the BBC reported.

They hope to assess whether people who made mistakes, such as former PM Tony Blair, can be pursued in civil courts.

The report did not make any findings on whether individuals acted unlawfully.

However, it rejected the legal basis for UK military action, and said Blair overstated the threat posed by then-President of Iraq Saddam Hussein and sent ill-prepared troops into battle.

There was no "imminent threat" from Saddam - and the intelligence case was "not justified", Sir John Chilcot, the ex-civil servant who chaired the inquiry, said.

The report highlighted a catalogue of errors in political and military decision-making, including: UK military commanders made "over-optimistic assessments" of their capabilities which had led to "bad decisions". There was "little time" to properly prepare three military brigades for deployment in Iraq. The risks were neither "properly identified nor fully exposed" to ministers, resulting in "equipment shortfalls."

Source: MENA