(UK) Government ordered to release Saddam Hussein dossier [View All]

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Source: The Guardian

Ruling follows three-year battle by journalist Chris Ames to obtain drafts of documents

The government has been ordered to release further details relating to its controversial dossier on Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction, following a ruling by the information commissioner.

The ruling follows a three-year battle by journalist Chris Ames to obtain drafts of the dossier, as well as comments made about them by officials and spy chiefs in the run-up to its publication in September 2002.

Allegations that the dossier was "sexed up" before publication to make a stronger case for war on Iraq were examined by the Hutton inquiry into the death of government scientist David Kelly in 2003.

Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, has rejected the government's argument that publishing comments made about drafts of the dossier could jeopardise national security.

He said there was "a strong public interest in a degree of exposure of the circumstances of the dossier's production" in order to throw light on the question of whe

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/sep/04/iraq.iraq