Belgian Appeals Court Moves Closer to Indicting Ariel Sharon
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was summoned to Brussels to appear before a Court of Appeal on November 28th. The Court was deliberating on whether it had jurisdiction to continue proceedings against Sharon for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon.
Sharon has ignored the summons, but the Belgian Court continues to hear presentations from victims of the massacres in which hundreds of unarmed Palestinian refugees - men, women and children - were killed by Lebanese Phalangist forces with the knowledge and, in some cases, participation of Israeli Defence Forces and Israeli Shin Bet agents.
The legal team representing Sharon, who was Israel's Defence Minister at the time of the massacres, asked in September that the presiding judge drop the case on the grounds that Sharon had already been the subject of a judicial investigation in Israel. The Kahan commission, chaired by head of the Israeli Supreme Court Yitzhak Kahan, released its report on the massacres in 1983. The Commission, which to this day has not released all of its findings, found that Sharon, along with other Israelis, bore responsibility for the massacre. No charges were ever laid in connection with the findings of the Kahan Commission. (Under the Belgian law introduced in 1993, foreigners can be prosecuted for war crimes committed on foreign soil if they have not been tried elsewhere for their crimes).
However, the lawyers representing the more than 20 Palestinian plaintiffs who filed the case in Belgium argued that the Kahan Commission could not be considered a judicial investigation as it was simply another government commission of inquiry, with no power to lay charges or impose punishment
The case against Sharon was originally filed in June 2000. Since that time, Israeli officials have been lobbying strongly in Belgium and throughout the EU to have the Belgian law amended to grant diplomatic immunity for sitting heads of state. The Israeli government has also gone to great lengths to paint the case as purely political, with no legal merit.
If the Belgian Appeals Court, which did not require either the plaintiffs or the defendant to attend its November 28th proceedings, rules in favour of the plaintiffs, it will be the first time in history that a sitting head of state will face war crimes charges while in office. According to the legal team representing the plaintiffs, the Belgian court would be able to try Sharon in absentia. The court would also be able to demand his extradition.