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Palestinian refugees Mahmud Yunis and Sanaa al-Hussein from Shatila successfully tour the Spanish State in support of the case against Ariel Sharon
Iniciativas por el procesamiento de Sharon por crímenes contra la Humanidad
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Campaign for Justice for the Victims of Sabra and Shatila Press Release, November 30, 2001 On Wednesday, the case against Sharon entered a new phase when Belgium's Attorney-General, Pierre Morlet, stated that the Belgian court was competent to judge the case and that the investigation into Sharon's responsibility for the 1982 massacre should continue. Attorneys for Ariel Sharon had challenged the case, causing its suspension in October, by contending that Belgium had no jurisdiction to try a serving head of government. In June 2001, a suit was lodged in a Belgian court charging Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with crimes against humanity during the1982 massacre of at least 900 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila on the southern edge of Beirut. At the time of the massacres, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were in control of all Beirut. As Minister of Defense with overall responsibility for the IDF and architect of Israel's invasion of Lebanon, Sharon, the suit holds, had command responsibility for the Lebanese Forces militia sent into the camps by the IDF on the evening of 16 September. The IDF received first reports of atrocities in the camps within two hours, but allowed the Lebanese Forces to remain in the camps until the morning of 18 September. According to Chibli Mallat, a Lebanese lawyer who is representing 23 survivors of the massacre together with two Belgian lawyers: "Command who pulled the trigger. A commander sitting miles away would be much more responsible for the crimes committed in the camps than the people actually doing the killings." In an interview one day after an appeals court heard arguments concerning Belgium's competency to judge Ariel Sharon for crimes against humanity, Mallat emphasized that principles, not politics, undergird the case against Sharon. "All major international human rights organizations fully support this investigation into Sharon's culpability. It is purely an issue of international human rights and the necessity of ending impunity for war crimes, no matter where they are committed or by whom. Nineteen years have passed since one of the most atrocious massacres of the 20th century took place in Sabra and Shatila. Up until now, the victims and survivors have not been recognized or indemnified." The suit against Sharon was filed in June under a 1993 Belgian law, amended in 1999, that enables war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide to be tried in Belgium regardless of where they took place, the nationalities of the victims or the perpetrators of the crimes. On Wednesday, the case against Sharon entered a new phase when Belgium's Attorney-General, Pierre Morlet, stated that the Belgian court was competent to judge the case and that the investigation into Sharon's responsibility for the 1982 massacre should continue. Attorneys for Ariel Sharon had challenged the case, causing its suspension in October, by contending that Belgium had no jurisdiction to try a serving head of government. They also argued that Sharon had already been tried by Israel's 1982 Kahan Commission inquiry into the events in Sabra and Shatila, which concluded that Sharon bore "personal responsibility" for the massacres. In Wednesday's hearing, the positions of the lawyers for the plaintiffs were upheld by Attorney-General Morlet. "He rejected all the arguments of Sharon's lawyers," said Mallat, adding that the hearing was the first time victims and survivors of the massacre could present their testimonies in an independent and neutral court. Mallat expressed satisfaction that the claim of prime ministerial immunity put forward by Sharon's lawyers was rejected. "Our case is sound: there is no immunity for war crimes." At a press conference in Brussels yesterday, five senators representing a wide spectrum of Belgian political opinion affirmed their support for the case. The senators stated that the aims of the case were above reproach and that its legal reasoning was sound. Some senators publicly criticized attempts by Israeli officials to accuse Belgium of "anti-Semitism". The senators' support assumed added significance in the context of a legal proposition introduced by Fred Erdman, deputy and president of the Commission of Justice of the Belgian House of Commons, calling for drastic changes in Belgium's Genocide-Statute of 1993. If accepted, Erdman's proposal would automatically terminate the case against Sharon, as well as a number of other similar cases, including one brought by Iraqi Kurds against Saddam Hussein. In light of new revelations detailing the extent of cooperation between the IDF and the Lebanese Forces, a rightwing Christian militia armed and trained by Israel, Sharon's complicity in war crimes will be even harder to refute. Hebrew documents anonymously provided to Mallat and his colleagues last June, and widely believed to be sections of an unpublished annex to the final report of the Kahan Commission, reveal that Sharon encouraged the Lebanese Forces to enter the camps despite knowing of their desire to raze their camps and despite knowing their record of atrocities during the IDF's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Recent journalistic investigations have also revealed that IDF soldiers oversaw and assisted in the interrogation of hundreds of Palestinian men and boys at a sports stadium on the edge of the camps during and after the massacre. Some of the men and boys were taken away, never to be seen again. The legal teams for the massacre survivors and Ariel Sharon will convene again in Brussels on 26 December and will have a third hearing on 23 January. A final decision on whether the case is admissible is expected to be made shortly afterwards. Committees of the International Campaign for Justice for the
Victims of Sabra and Shatila have been established in Europe,
Lebanon, and North America to increase public awareness of the
campaign and its significance to a growing and broad-based |
