Maybe we should tell them Blair is not a money grabbing bastard and that he’s anti-capitalism and will be protesting at the next G20 march. We know normally the MET are itching to get stuck in there and hit innocent men and women. And when they’re caught in broad daylight hitting an unarmed women in front of hoardes of the media, they get off scot free. (See : Sergeant Smellie)

What an absolute disgrace our ‘justice’ system is.

To me this is clear, the orders come straight from Number 10. To ignore the Law. Of course it will be done behind the cloak of ‘National Security’ , ex-pm’s rights etc. Some such lies and bullshit
Add to that Blair is being protected round the clock by the Police (at the taxpayer’s expense)
Clearly a conflict of interest. What would the arresting officer’s do? face down his protection Police, both armed, have a standoff.
This will all be irrelevant in 4 years time when a new dynasty in UK Politics comes to fruition. time for the monopoly to end. Time for a true democracy and people power in the UK for the first time in history. Change is a coming. my uk
Coming to a street near you.

_________________________________________________________________________
10 April 2010

Dear Metropolitan Police Service (MPS),

I would like to know, so that it is on public record, how many
requests the Metroplitan Police have received since 2003 to arrest
the known criminal Tony Blair.(Ex Prime Minister of the UK)
I could post links to every major news publication in the world for
proof but I doubt that’s necessary.
What I would like to know, and the public at large I believe, is
how many individual requests the Metropolitan Police have received
to have Tony Blair arrested and charged with any crime. Most likely
it will be for the same crimes, treason, crimes against humanity,
lying to parliament and the British Public, and ordering genocide
against the Iraqi people. Along with partnering with the U.S in
extraordinary rendition, torture and sending British servicemen and
women to their deaths in an ILLEGAL war.
Now proven to be indisputable FACTS by the World at large.
So to recap how many requests have the Met received from the
public?
The number of times you have refused to act and ignored the laws of
this country will be directly proportional to the number of
requests you have received, just to make it easier for you.
The last time I looked he was earning millions monthly, coming and
going as he pleases into our fair land. And very much alive, free
and in rude health.
It’s important this information is in the public domain, so that
action can be taken in the future against Police Chiefs who are
clearly ordering their ’staff’ (police officers) not to act on
this. If it is the Police Management who is not ordering this lack
of action, then it clearly must be Politicians, Parliament, MI5?
This is a public request for all information on this subject also,
all internal memos and any other salient information that is
resulting in non-action.
All Police Authorities in the UK are currently guilty of this,
however I think important the MET is honest about this information
first, as London is where Tony Blair was based and worked for so
many years, and as you are the biggest Police Authority in the UK,
one would assume you have had the most requests/complaints to
arrest him.
May I remind you under the Freedom of Information Act you must
supply this information in a short time frame, or supply an
extremely good reason why not, and then be held accountable should
you fail.
Thanking you in advance.

Yours faithfully,
Freedom of Information Request

In the meantime, several brave people have attempted citizen arrrests. Peacefully, and fully within their right under the law. Predictably the police in one case arrested a lone unarmed woman for trying to exercise her legal right. We can only hope the officers responsible are disciplined and the pressure will continue to rise. The very least we can hope in the short term is Blair is sweating every time he makes a public appearance. There’s enough countries who subscibe to the Geneva Convention, even if the Bristish authorities are choosing to currently ignore World Law.

It was David Cronin, a reporter for the Inter Press Service news agency and The Guardian, placed his hand on Mr Blair’s arm and said: “This is a citizens’ arrest. You are guilty of war crimes.” This was the first public attempt, there have been a number of attempts since.

Mr Blair, speaking to MEPs about his role as EU and US envoy to the Middle East, momentarily flinched at the contact but was saved by a bodyguard who intervened to push the Irish journalist away.
Mr Cronin, who has written for the Guardian, said: ‘It was an attempt to draw attention to Mr Blair’s crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.’

He left the room of his own accord after the incident, although when he returned half an hour later he was refused entry by security.

‘My motivation in trying to arrest Blair is entirely based on my contempt for the crimes he has committed and abetted in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon and Serbia,’ Cronin told EUobserver.com.

Transcript:

AMY GOODMAN: John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, escaped a citizen’s arrest Wednesday night as he addressed an audience gathered at the Hay Festival in Wales. Security guards blocked the path of columnist and activist George Monbiot, who tried to make the arrest as Bolton left the stage. Monbiot planned the action, because he says Bolton is a war criminal for his role in helping to initiate the invasion of Iraq in 2003 while he served as US undersecretary of state for arms control.

George Monbiot joins us now on the phone from England. He is a widely read columnist for the Guardian of London and the author of numerous books. His latest is Bring On the Apocalypse: Collected Writing. Actually, he joins us now from Wales.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, George Monbiot.

GEORGE MONBIOT: Thanks very much, Amy. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us exactly what happened.

GEORGE MONBIOT: Well, I made my intention clear to perform a citizen’s arrest of John Bolton. I wrote a charge sheet detailing exactly the role that he had played in launching a war of aggression in violation of international treaties, which is a clear violation of the Nuremberg Principles. And I took a dossier of evidence down to the local police station. I asked them to act on it. But when they failed to arrest Mr. Bolton, I tried to arrest him myself, and I tried to get up onto the stage as he was leaving it. And I called out, “John Robert Bolton, I am arresting you for the charge of aggression, the crime of aggression, as defined by the Nuremberg Principles.” But I was caught by two very large security guards and pulled out of the venue very quickly.

AMY GOODMAN: How does a citizen’s arrest work?

GEORGE MONBIOT: Well, under an act of Parliament here, the Serious Organised [Crime and Police] Act, a citizen has the right to arrest anyone that they suspect to be guilty of a crime who would otherwise get away from the scene or escape without being arrested, and to hand that person over to the police. Now, there is a proviso which says that if—you can only act in this way if the police are unable to act to arrest this person. In this particular case, the police were able to act and had chosen not to do so. So, had I succeeded in arresting Mr. Bolton, I would have put myself on the wrong side of the law.

AMY GOODMAN: John Bolton has also been criticized for calling for US strikes on Iran. Earlier this month, the New York Times published an article, based solely on unnamed sources, suggesting the Lebanese group Hezbollah is training Iraqi militants inside Iran. Hours after the article was published, this is what John Bolton had to say on Fox News.

JOHN BOLTON: I think this is a case where the use of military force against a training camp or to show the Iranians we’re simply not going to tolerate this is really the most prudent thing to do, and then the ball would be in Iran’s court to draw the appropriate lesson to stop harming our troops.

JAIME COLBY: Ambassador John Bolton, a good message to end on. Thank you very much.

JOHN BOLTON: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response, George Monbiot?

GEORGE MONBIOT: Yes. Well, John Bolton has the position that any and every country of which he disapproves should be attacked, and then we work out the justification for that attack later. He was one of the signatories of the letter sent by the Project for a New American Century to Bill Clinton in 1998, saying that we should attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. And he had one justification then, he had a different justification in 2003, he has a different justification today. It’s very clear that with Bolton, as with Bush, as with Cheney, as with Rumsfeld, the urge to go to war came first, and the justification came second.

Now, when you look at the main instruments of international law, you see very clearly that waging a preemptive war where you are not in an immediate crisis of self-defense is a crime against international law. In fact, the Nuremberg tribunals described it as the supreme international crime. And it was for that crime that most of the Nazi war criminals were convicted. And that is exactly the crime that Bolton has conspired in committing.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what happened to Jose Bustani?

GEORGE MONBIOT: Well, Jose Bustani is a Brazilian diplomat who was head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. And in 2002, Bustani offered a way out of the impasse between Iraq in the United States. He said, OK, Saddam Hussein won’t allow the UNMOVIC inspectors in, primarily because UNSCOM turned out to have been infiltrated by the CIA, and so the successor organization UNMOVIC was viewed with intense suspicion in Iraq. Bustani said, “I can solve this problem for you by bringing Saddam Hussein into the Chemical Weapons Convention and then launching inspections of my own in Iraq, and therefore we could have a peaceful resolution to this crisis.”

Immediately, the United States swung into action against him—the delegation led by John Bolton—and demanded his dismissal as director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, failed at first and then threatened to withhold all its dues and to destroy the organization altogether, whereupon the other nations, led by the United Kingdom, went along with the US delegation and agreed to sack Bustani.

Bustani later took his case to an international labor organization tribunal and was completely exonerated of all the complaints which the US had leveled against him. And the only one which seemed to remain was that he had tried to prevent war from being waged with Iraq. And so, far from seeking a negotiated settlement to the issue of the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, John Bolton ensured that anyone—Bustani’s attempt to ensure there was a negotiated settlement was, in Bolton’s word, “tanked.”

AMY GOODMAN: So, George Monbiot, where you go from here? You didn’t—were not able to arrest John Bolton in Wales. Did he know what you were attempting to do?

GEORGE MONBIOT: Yes, he does. And he’s actually made a public statement concerning it. I would urge anyone who is in a position to do so to try to exercise a citizen’s arrest of any of the primary authors of the Iraq War. And I’m talking about Bush—that makes it very, very difficult, but it’s—there’s a higher chance obviously when he ceases to be president—Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Bolton, and over here in the United Kingdom, Tony Blair and some of his cabinet ministers. And I certainly intend to try to carry out a citizen’s arrest of either Blair or one of the other senior architects of the war here in the United Kingdom.

And what I found from this instance was that even if you don’t succeed in carrying out the citizen’s arrest, you are able to focus a great deal of attention on the issue and to ensure that people do not forget. This is not an ordinary political mistake which was committed in Iraq. This was the supreme international crime, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Those people were not killed in the ordinary sense; they were murdered. And they were murdered by the authors of that war, who are the greatest mass murderers of the twenty-first century so far.

Please visit: George Monbiot