MADRID, 21 March 2007 — The judge who tried to jail Chile’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet said yesterday it was time to hold US President George W. Bush and his allies to account for waging war in Iraq. In an opinion piece in newspaper El Pais, published on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion, Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon said the war was “one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history.”

“We should look more deeply into the possible criminal responsibility of the people who are, or were, responsible for this war and see whether there is sufficient evidence to make them answer for it,” Garzon wrote. “There is enough of an argument in 650,000 deaths for this investigation and inquiry to start without more delay,” he said.

Garzon, who rose to fame in 1999 when he attempted to extradite Pinochet from Britain and try him for crimes against humanity, was particularly critical of the former Spanish government, a major backer of the Iraq invasion. “Those who joined the US president in the war against Iraq have as much or more responsibility than him because despite having doubts and biased information, they put themselves in the hands of the aggressor to carry out an ignoble act of death and destruction that continues to this day,” he said.

In February, Spain’s former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said he now knew Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction but “the problem was not having been clever enough to know earlier.” Garzon wrote: “If he didn’t know enough, he should be asked why he didn’t act prudently, giving United Nations inspectors more leeway instead of doing the opposite in total submission and fidelity to President Bush.”

“Breaking all international law under the pretext of fighting terrorism, there has been a demolishing attack on the state of law and the very essence of the international community since 2003,” he said. Garzon, who took a sabbatical last year to study international terrorism, said the Iraq war had helped incite hatred and garner more support for terrorist training camps.

“In some way, with a terrible lack of awareness, we have been and are helping this monster grow more and more and strengthen by the minute so it is probably invincible,” he said.

Meanwhile, a majority of Britons think the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a mistake, which has Britain less safe, according to a poll published yesterday. Some 55 percent feel Britain is less safe now, with only five percent feeling safer since the US-led war to oust Saddam Hussein, according to the survey by the BBC and polling institute ICM. Overall 29 percent backed the decision to go to war, with 60 percent saying it was a mistake.

“Four years on from the war, most people in the country have now come to the view that the United States and Britain were wrong to take military action against Iraq in 2003,” said Nick Sparrow of ICM.