A three-judge panel of the B.C. Court of Appeal has unanimously dismissed a Vancouver lawyer's appeal to proceed with criminal charges against U.S. President George W. Bush.

In a written decision, B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Risa Levine ruled that lawyer Gail Davidson and a group called Lawyers Against the War had no legal authority to continue their private prosecution of Bush because the attorney general of Canada had not granted consent to continue within eight days of charges being laid.

Crown counsel had entered a preliminary objection, claiming that the case was moot because Irwin Cotler, then Canada's attorney general, did not grant consent within the allotted time period. The court accepted the argument that Cotler's consent is necessary to prosecute anyone who is not a citizen on torture-related charges.

On November 30, 2004, Davidson laid seven criminal charges in Vancouver Provincial Court against Bush while he was visiting Canada. A justice of the peace accepted the charges from Davidson, who was acting as a private prosecutor.

Davidson, cochair of Lawyers Against the War, claimed that Bush bore responsibility for what occurred to detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at a U.S. facility at Guantíƒ ¡namo Bay.

During a December 6, 2004 hearing, Provincial Court Judge William Kitchen ordered the public and media out of the courtroom and then declared the charges a nullity. Kitchen accepted the Crown's argument that Bush, as a head of state, enjoyed immunity from prosecution.

Davidson appealed this ruling in B.C. Supreme Court, where her arguments were dismissed last year by Justice Deborah Satanove. Satanove described Davidson's prosecution as an “abuse of process” .

Before the B.C. Court of Appeal, Davidson alleged that Kitchen erred in finding that Bush had immunity as a head of state. Davidson also alleged that Satanove had erred by ruling that her criminal charge was an “abuse of process”  when this issue had never been raised in submissions by her or Crown counsel.

Levine, Justice Mary Newbury, and Justice Pamela Kirkpatrick all upheld the Crown's argument. “The consent of the Attorney General to the prosecution of offences with international implications recognizes the importance of Canada's relationships with other states, and the role of the federal government in managing those relationships,”  Levine wrote in her ruling.