Prominent South African human rights activist Desmond Tutu has argued for George W Bush and Tony Blair to be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for having triggered the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In an editorial for the British newspaper the Observer, published on Sunday, 2 September 2012, the Nobel Peace Prize winner wrote that Bush and Blair falsified the intelligence to mislead the public into believing that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction as a pretext to invade that Arab country, an event which has led to the destabilization of the entire region.

“The then-leaders of the US and UK [George W. Bush and Tony Blair respectively] fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us.”, emphasizes the black South African Archbishop, indicating that for him the crisis in Syria and the tensions over Iran are also consequences of the war launched against Iraq in 2003.

He thus explained his decision not to attend the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit, held last week in Johannesburg, in the presence of several international guests, including Tony Blair.

“Leadership and morality are indivisible”, Archbishop Desmond Tutu highlighted in his article.