The 12-volume Chilcot report on the conflict in Iraq is to be released today, seven years after the inquiry began.
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Chilcot was appointed to lead the inquiry by Gordon Brown in 2009, shortly before he took over from Tony Blair as Prime Minister.
In the United Kingdom, most attention will be focused on what the report has to say about the motives of former Prime Minister Tony Blair and what was contained in email exchanges between Blair and former U.S. President George W. Bush.
In 2003, then-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair eagerly pushed his country into the invasion, on the promise that the Saddam Hussein regime was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
During his leadership bid previous year, Mr Corbyn said: “It is past time that Labour apologised to the British people for taking them into the Iraq War on the basis of deception and to the Iraqi people for the suffering we have helped cause”.
The Chilcot inquiry launched in 2009 as British troops withdrew from Iraq, tasked with investigating the run-up to the 2003 US-led invasion and the subsequent occupation.
The final report comes to around 2.6 million words – three times as long as the complete works of Shakespeare – although the executive summary is believed to run to only around 150 pages.
Leaders of the Stop The War Coalition, CND and other groups will demand “truth and justice” and there will be calls for former Prime Minister Tony Blair and others to face the full force of the law.
But it will also assess intelligence on Saddam’s supposed weapons of mass destruction – the original justification for military action – and the legal advice of attorney general Lord Goldsmith, who finally gave the green light just days before the invasion.
In the same note, Mr Blair made it quite clear that he wanted to see President Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime overthrown, although for public consumption he persistently maintained that the USA and UK were not after “regime change” but that their goal was to compel the Iraqi dictator to comply with United Nations resolutions. Why did we go into Iraq?’
The International Criminal Court, which was petitioned at the time to examine possible evidence of war crimes, said Monday it will consider the report as part of its preliminary examination to determine whether there is a reasonable basis to open an investigation.
Retired civil servant John Chilcot is due to publish his 2.6-million-word report on a divisive conflict that by the time British combat forces left in 2009 had killed 179 British troops, nearly 4,500 American personnel and more than 100,000 Iraqis.
Chilcot’s remit included examining decisions made and actions taken in the lead-up to the March 2003 invasion and identifying lessons to be learned.
“We haven’t set out to criticise individuals or institutions”, Mr Chilcot said ahead of the report launch at 1000 GMT (6pm Singapore time).
She said: “It never goes away”.
Many – including dozens of victims’ families – are hoping the report will be an opportunity to lay the blame at the feet of the man they say was the architect of Britain’s role in the war: Tony Blair.
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However for Blair to be prosecuted, there would have to be hard evidence that Blair knew about, and approved, any war crimes that took place on the ground in Iraq.
