LAWYERS for anti-war campaigners being prosecuted for breaking into military bases are trying to force senior government figures to appear in court.

The legal team for 14 Greenpeace members is targeting Lord Boyce, the chief of the defence staff at the time of the war, who is reported to have had doubts about the legality of the invasion of Iraq.

The environmental group is also considering calling Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the former deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office. She resigned because she objected to advice from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, to the government saying the war could be justified under international law.

Greenpeace had been attempting to subpoena Goldsmith but has shifted its attention to Wilmshurst and Boyce now they are outside Whitehall.

The cases are considered so sensitive by the government that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has engaged Professor Christopher Greenwood QC, one of Britain’s most prestigious lawyers, to assist in the prosecutions.

Greenwood’s advice is widely acknowledged to have formed the basis of Goldsmith’s opinion on the legality of the war. He is understood to have agreed to act for the CPS next month in prosecuting three peace protesters charged with criminal damage after a break-in at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire last March.

Lawyers for Greenpeace have also been told Greenwood is advising a CPS legal team who will prosecute 14 of its activists who broke into Marchwood military port in February last year. The case starts at Southampton magistrates’ court on Tuesday.

The government is concerned because two otherwise minor cases may become the arena for the legal justification for war to be aired in front of a judge for the first time.

Greenwood’s involvement was described by a Greenpeace spokesman last night as akin to using a “legal sledgehammer to crack a criminal peanut”.

The protesters all intend to argue that their actions were justified because of the “necessity” to prevent an illegal war.

Greenwood has consistently argued the war was legal under existing United Nations resolutions. This will be used by the CPS in an attempt to persuade the courts in both cases that there is no need to subpoena Goldsmith’s full advice or call witnesses such as Boyce and Wilmshurst who could reveal official doubts over the war.

A CPS spokesman said the legal team for the Fairford trial had not been decided but confirmed that Greenwood was an adviser in Southampton.

As the government comes under legal pressure, Hans Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector, today calls on Tony Blair to apologise to the British people for misleading them about the need for war.

In an interview in today’s Sunday Times News Review, Blix contends that Blair and President George Bush exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq to persuade politicians and the public in Britain and America to back an “illegal” war.

He says secret memos in the Foreign Office may prove Blair ignored legal advice and he accuses the prime minister of “spin” and “hyping”.

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