BRUSSELS, 13 February 2003 — Belgium’s supreme appeals court ruled yesterday that a genocide lawsuit against Ariel Sharon could go ahead once he no longer enjoyed immunity as prime minister of Israel, the plaintiffs’ lawyer said.
The ruling opened the way for survivors of a 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees to press their case against the Israeli leader, whom they hold responsible for the deaths of hundreds of their kin in Israeli-occupied Beirut.
“This is a victory for international justice and for the victims,” Luc Walleyn, one of lawyers for the plaintiffs, told Reuters at the courthouse. The survivors had appealed a lower court ruling last June that Sharon could not be prosecuted for the massacre by Israeli-backed Christian militiamen in the Sabra and Shatila camps because he was not in Belgium.
The plaintiffs are using a Belgian human rights law which claims universal jurisdiction allowing the country’s courts to try crimes against humanity and genocide, no matter where they were committed.
Sharon was defense minister at the time of the massacre. In 1983, an Israeli commission found him indirectly responsible but Sharon was never prosecuted.
In a later development, Israel recalled its ambassador to Belgium for "consultations" after Belgium court ruling. Ambassador Yehudi Kenar has been "called to Jerusalem for consultations," Foreign Ministry spokesman Yoni Peled said.
In the occupied territories, Israeli soldiers shot dead two Palestinians near a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip yesterday, who the army alleged were involved in an attempt to carry out an attack with grenades and knives.
The violence flared one day after Israel sealed off the West Bank and Gaza, imposing travel curbs on Palestinians celebrating Eid Al-Adha. Shortly before dawn yesterday, soldiers opened fire at two Palestinians approaching the Dugit Jewish settlement in the northern Gaza Strip, military officials said. (Reuters)
