Thursday, May 29, 2008 – 12:55 PM
Manchester, Britain (SANA) The environmental campaigner and journalist George Monbiot last night tried and failed to make a citizen's arrest of the former Bush administration official John Bolton over war crimes committed during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
As Bolton ended an hour-long discussion at the Hay Festival in Wales, Monbiot, who had earlier challenged him for breaches of the postwar Nuremberg Principles, defining war crimes, moved towards the stage waving a charge sheet.
Security staff, however, intervened and bundled Monbiot out of the tent as 20 supporters chanted “war criminal” and waved placards.
Monbiot, The Guardian columnist, challenged Bolton during the debate to say why – in planning, preparing and waging war against Iraq- he was any different from Nazi war criminals condemned at Nuremberg.
Afterwards, Monbiot, a contributor to the Guardian, said: “I’m disappointed I couldn't reach him, but I made what I believe to be the first attempt ever to arrest one of the perpetrators of the Iraq war, and I would like to see that followed up.
Monbiot has been pushing his authority to make the arrest, saying that Section 24A of Britain's Serious Organized Crime and Police Act 2005 gives individuals the authority to arrest without a warrant “anyone whom he has reasonable grounds for suspecting to be guilty” of an offense.”
Bolton resigned as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the end of 2006. he is considered as an influential advocate of hard-line foreign and defense policies closely associated with the neoconservative political faction. He was tagged to serve in the George W. Bush administration in 2001.
