Former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad accused George W Bush and Tony Blair of being more evil and bigger murderers than Saddam Hussein and the Sept 11 attackers. In some of his most provocative swipes at the US and British leaders, Mahathir said Monday that their war in Iraq had caused worse terror than al-Qaeda’s suicide bombers around the world. “History should remember Blair and Bush as the killers of children, or as the lying prime minister and president,” said Mahathir, long known for frequent and scathing verbal attacks on Western countries and culture. As prime minister, Mahathir was unabashedly vocal in his criticism of the United States, Britain and Australia. After stepping down in October 2003, he has become even more strident. “What Blair and Bush have done is worse than what Saddam had done,” Mahathir, 81, said in a speech to inaugurate a three-day conference organised by his non-government organisation, Perdana, and aimed at criminalising war.
On Wednesday, conference delegates are expected to formally launch a war tribunal that would hold “trials” for world leaders, including Bush and Blair, against whom common citizens file complaints. The tribunal will not have the legal authority of any international organisation and will not be able to impose penalties, but Mahathir said its aim is to condemn the accused in history books.
“We should not hang Blair if the tribunal finds him guilty, but he should always carry the label ‘War Criminal, Killer of Children, Liar,”” Mahathir said. “And so should Bush and the pocket Bush of the Bush land of Australia,” he said, referring to Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard, a staunch ally in Washington’s campaign against terrorism. Seventeen people, nine from Iraq, five from the Palestinian territories and three from Lebanon, have arrived for the peace conference, where they will submit oral or written complaints to the so-called Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission.
After investigations, the commission will decide whether the leaders accused in the complaints should stand trial, albeit in absentia, at the war tribunal. Mahathir said terrorist attacks, such as those of Sept. 11, 2001,are weak peopleÂ’s retaliation against oppression by powerful countries.
In the war on terror ordered by Bush, Mahathir was a front-line Asian ally of the US immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, arresting and jailing more than 100 suspected Islamic sympathisers of al-Qaeda in Malaysia. However, Mahathir maintains that the root cause of Islamic terrorism is the injustices of the West, especially in thePalestinian territories and Iraq.
Terrorism cannot be condoned, but neither can the “cruel retaliation by powerful countries,” he said. The Sept 11 attackers may have killed about 3,000 people, but about 600,000 people have been killed during the US-led war in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. “The terror caused (by powerful countries) is actually greater, and the powerful countries are much more terrorists than the suicide bombers,” he said.