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Witnesses Say Palestinians "Disappeared" After Surviving Camp Massacres
BRUSSELS, Nov. 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Chilling new evidence came out Wednesday suggesting that more than 1,000 Palestinian survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Shatilla refugee camp massacres in Beirut "disappeared" within 24 hours of the slaughter, often in areas under direct Israeli military control.
An estimated 2,000 Palestinian refugees were murdered in the massacres in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps led by Maronite Christian militiamen (Phalange) during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, then Israel's defense minister, was the architect of the military campaign.
Sharon was found indirectly responsible for the massacres by an Israeli commission of inquiry and was forced to resign.
The testimony in Brussels, which describes in detail how victims were last seen by their families in the hands of Israeli troops and Israel's militia allies, will be among the material to be considered by a Belgian judge. The jurist could decide today whether Sharon should be prosecuted for the slaughter which occurred during Israel's occupation of Lebanon, the British daily newspaper,
The Independent, said.
Among the female witnesses cited by lawyers in Belgium who are seeking an indictment against Sharon, at least five claim that more than 100 men were detained by the militiamen and handed over to the Israelis alive. They were never seen again.
If accepted by the court, the new evidence could disturbingly implicate both the Israeli army and Sharon, particularly if the Israelis continued their collaboration with the Phalange after the murders in the camps, and if they permitted the Phalange to take away more prisoners.
The Belgian court was to hear arguments Wednesday on whether it has jurisdiction in a suit initiated by Palestinian survivors accusing Sharon of genocide in the 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.
The lawsuit was brought by 23 victims of the massacres, or their families, under a 1993 Belgian law which allows war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide to be tried in Belgian courts.
The law empowers Belgian courts, regardless of where the alleged crimes took place or the nationality or residence of the victims or the accused.
Sharon's Belgian lawyers contend the case cannot be tried here because the Belgian court does not have jurisdiction, a view contested by the Palestinian plaintiffs.
Arguments by lawyers for both sides will be heard by the trial committal chamber of the Brussels Court of Appeals, which will rule on whether the case can be tried here.
An inquiry into the facts of the case by a Belgian investigating magistrate has been placed in abeyance pending that ruling.
Belgium has long resisted pressure from the Israeli government to amend its 1993 law under which Sharon could face prosecution in Belgium for crimes against humanity.
The unique law has come under fire from critics who say it is turning Belgium into a battleground for the settling of foreign scores. And there is growing pressure in Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt's coalition government to abolish it.
But left-wing segments of the coalition oppose the move, and any change is considered unlikely until after the next elections in 2003.
Two human rights groups, the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues and Human Rights Watch, on Monday defended the law as "essential to preventing officials from escaping justice for serious crimes in international law."
On the sidelines of an Arab conference on racism in Cairo in July, Belgian lawyer Marc Walleyn said the Belgian government had deferred debate on an amendment, which would give Sharon immunity until at least next year.
"There was clearly pressure on the Belgian government to do something to change the law, but the government resisted to that pressure," Walleyn was quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) as saying then.
Brussels decided not to move to change the non-immunity law, "at least not this year," Walleyn told a packed press conference. He added that an "important threat" to the investigation had been averted.
Earlier in July, former Lebanese intelligence chief, Elie Hobeika, announced he would testify in the Belgian lawsuit probing Sharon's responsibility for the massacres.
Hobeika, 44, was intelligence chief of the right-wing Christian Lebanese Forces militia at the time of the killings. He was identified by an official Israeli inquiry in 1983 as the man who ordered the massacres. Hobeika said he wants to clear his name and that of Lebanon's Christians.
On Thursday, Sharon and his predecessor, Ehud Barak, were among 15 Israelis named in a new case brought in Belgium by six Palestinian fathers of children killed by Israeli forces during the Intifada, news agencies reported.
The Palestinians are "the fathers of children, who died of wounds caused by bullets fired by the Israeli army," their lawyer, Marie-Christine Warlop, told AFP.
They all belong to the Justice and Peace for the Palestinian People association.
As well as Sharon and Barak, the case is brought against Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Army Chief of Staff General Shaul Mofaz, and 11 Israeli soldiers - both officers and enlisted soldiers - from the Tarmiet base in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, said AFP.
The men "all carry a responsibility...in the murder of children in the Palestinian territories occupied by the army of the state of Israel," AFP added.
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