Following Lord Goldsmith's declaration that he would stand up in court to defend his advice to go to war in Iraq, Greenpeace has asked the Attorney-General to appear as a witness in a case against 14 of our activists in Southampton next week.
If Lord Goldsmith refuses, we will ask the trial judge to issue a summons against him.
During the build-up to war, Lord Goldsmith said on record: "I don't just give advice to Government behind closed doors. I'm prepared to stand up and defend that advice in the courts."
The 14 Greenpeace volunteers are facing criminal charges relating to their occupation of tanks at Southampton's Marchwood military base in February 2003. Throughout their case they have argued that the war was illegal and that their actions were necessary to prevent loss of life.
The Attorney General's evidence is thus crucial to their case, which has taken on great significance since the Crown Prosection Service (CPS) claimed the case against whistleblower Katherine Gun was dropped because they could not "disprove the defence of necessity" - that is to say, they could not counter the defence that her actions were justified to save lives.
Greenpeace's lawyers have been asking for the Attorney General's full advice for nearly a year.
This week we called on him to honour his pledge when our lawyers wrote to asking him to appear at the trial. He is yet to reply, but the trial judge does have the power to force his attendance if the defence team demands it.
Greenpeace also placed an open letter in national, local and legal publications asking Lord Goldsmith to give evidence at the trial.
Speculation suggests that the advice Lord Goldsmith gave to Tony Blair changed in the days before the March 20th invasion. Greenpeace lawyers want to know if his advice in February, when the Marchwood occupation took place, was different from his final advice.
