Families of Iraq soldiers threaten to sue Chilcot over delays

The mother of a teenage soldier killed in Iraq said families are “ready for the truth” as she backed a call for legal action over the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry.

The campaigner has previously said she fears the report produced by Sir John Chilcot will be a “whitewash” and ” the biggest cover up of our time”.

And Reg Keys, who lost his son, Lance-Corporal Thomas Keys, 20, in 2003, said: “We need to move this black cloud of Iraq away and consign it to history but we can not do that until Chilcot reports”. Prime Minister David Cameron last week urged its release.

“There are veterans who have said we shouldn’t have been there”.

Lawyers acting on behalf of 29 of the deceased soldiers’ families have demanded that Chilcot set a deadline for witnesses to respond and that the report be published by the end of the year.

In July Sir John turned down an offer from David Cameron for extra help.

SNP Defence spokesperson Brendan O’Hara MP has reiterated calls for publication after Lord Falconer – a close ally of former Prime Minister Tony Blair – admitted that the UK should not have gone to war with Iraq.

But lawyers for the families claim Sir John, 76, has breached the inquiry’s own protocols by not setting an end date.

“While Sir John [Chilcot] originally intended to give those due to be censured a deadline by which they would have to make representations in their defence, these have apparently been abandoned as the complexity of the process has become clear”, he reports. The events then set in stage the chaos and lawlessness in which Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) now thrives – where countless tens of thousands of Iraqis died, thousands more were imprisoned and millions were displaced. “He seems too anxious about what people like Blair will think or do… out of decency he could write to the families to let them know what’s going on but we find out through the press, which is wrong”.

“I think that should be borne in mind, we are engaged in a process that is going to produce an inquiry into an immensely important historic event and the Maxwellisation process gives us the best chance of getting it right”. “I will be angry with him for the rest of my life”. Liz Kendall, Labour leader candidate, said: “It has taken too long and I completely understand what the families are doing, what they want and what they are calling for and I would back that”.