THE mother of a teenage soldier killed in Iraq said families are “ready for the truth” as she backed a move for legal action over long delays in the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry.
Anti-war campaigner Rose Gentle believes the bereaved have struggled to move on with their lives as they await the report, while witnesses are given time to review accounts of their evidence.
Gentle, from Glasgow, whose son Gordon, 19, was killed in a bomb attack in 2004, said: “We can’t get closure, it’s been going on too long now. It’s hard for all the families, we really just want it over and done with.
“I would definitely support legal action if there’s not a date given of when the report is going to be published.”
Some 29 families of those who died have written to Sir John giving him a two-week ultimatum to set a date for releasing the report by the end of the year or they will fight him in the courts.
They are angry their suffering is dragged out while Sir John gives leading figures in the inquiry, such as Tony Blair, the chance to review their accounts – a process known as Maxwellisation.
The families claim the decision not to set a deadline for the publication of the final report is ‘unlawful’ – and if successful, their campaign could lead to the exposure of sensitive paperwork that Whitehall mandarins refused to hand to the Iraq Inquiry.
Roger Bacon, whose son Major Matthew Bacon, 34, died in a roadside bomb blast in Basra ten years ago, said: “It is morally reprehensible to keep delaying the publication of the report. It is utterly incomprehensible that the inquiry has been going on for six years and it is still not finished.”
Reg Keys, who lost 20-year-old son Lance-Corporal Thomas Keys in Iraq, described the continued delays as like an “open sore that can’t heal”.
He said: “We want to draw a line under this Iraq war so we can move on, but before that we need to know what it was all for. We want to know why Blair went against the UN and took us into Iraq while other European allies refused to join the war.
“I need to know what my son died for given that Iraq is now worse than it was before and has become a fermenting ground for terrorism.
“Sir John doesn’t seem to understand that these are real people that have lost loved ones.”
Valerie O’Neill, whose 27-year-old son Kris was killed by a roadside bomb in 2007, said: “We’ve waited long enough for this report into an illegal war.
“We’ve all been promised this report but it’s been delay after delay after delay. How many more years do we have to wait?
“Some people hoped we would go away quietly, but we won’t. We deserve the answers about why our children died, and we won’t give up until we get them.”
The families’ challenge comes after David Cameron urged Chilcot to speed up publication.
Yesterday Alex Salmond MP, SNP Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, described the delay in the inquiry as a “national disgrace” and said the families were right to prepare a legal fight.
He added: “Six years and £10 million later we still have nothing. Hundreds of thousands of people were affected by the illegal war and they are due an answer.”
Delays have been caused by a stand-off between the inquiry and Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood over the publication of conversations and communications between Blair and George W Bush.
The families have requested all the documents relating to the Maxwellisation process. Gordon Brown started the inquiry in 2009, ending years of Labour resistance, and it finished taking formal evidence in 2011.
At the weekend, it was reported that Chilcot was working only eight hours a week at his Westminster office. The inquiry has studied over 150,000 documents but last month it emerged Chilcot turned down the offer of extra resources to speed up the process.
A spokesman for the inquiry said it had a “large proportion” of replies from individuals who were to be criticised, and these would be “considered with care”.
The National view: Forget the excuses ... give Chilcot a deadline now
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