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--------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Belgian prosecutor approves Sharon case A Belgian appeals court is expected to decide early next year on whether Belgium has jurisdiction in a case of Palestinians trying to bring war crimes charges against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, after the Belgian state prosecutor said yesterday the trial should go ahead. Israel's attorneys have argued that Belgium does not have jurisdiction over the case, and hinted the episode could have far-reaching consequences for Belgian-Israeli relations. And in an apparently carefully timed publication, the Guardian newspaper published a report claiming to quote from original documents from the hitherto secret annex of the Kahan Commission of inquiry probing the massacre in the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut. The newspaper said the typewritten Hebrew documents, which it said it took extensive efforts to verify as real, including comparison tests of typewriters used at the time of the 1983 commission of inquiry, clearly show that top Israeli officials - including Sharon - knew of Lebanese Phalangist plans for massacring Palestinians, and at no point tried to dissuade such action. At the opening session of the appeals hearing yesterday, prosecutor Pierre Morlet argued that a Belgian court could take on the case presented by a group of survivors of the massacre in which 900 men, women and children were killed. Morlet rejected the Israeli arguments of immunity, lack of jurisdiction and the retroactive application of the Belgian law, promulgated in 1993, to events that took place a decade earlier. The Israeli side - including Irit Kohn, head of the Justice Ministry's international department - and diplomats who attended the hearing, have known for six weeks about Morlet's position and regard it as a reversal of previous Belgian policy regarding the case. Morlet did take into account one Israeli argument - the contradiction between the special procedures in Belgian law for trying a Belgian minister or member of parliament and the procedure for trying a foreign official. One of Israel's arguments against holding the trial is the discrimination Belgian law makes between how its own politicians are tried and how it would try foreign leaders. The court decided that it would hold two more sessions - at the end of December and the end of January - to continue hearing arguments about whether the investigation and trial should take place, and then would release a decision. Even so, both sides have already said they would appeal a decision not in their favor. Michael Verhaeghe, the Palestinians' lawyer, said that it was "very encouraging" that the prosecution agreed with the Palestinians' arguments. But the Israeli side voiced its disapproval of yesterday's decision. "To make Israel responsible is not justice," said Kohn. "We feel the complaints are hurting our sovereignty." The complaint also accuses other Israeli and Lebanese officials, but only one other name, Amos Yaron, then-IDF commander in the Beirut area, was mentioned. Unlike Sharon, he cannot claim immunity. Sharon was defense minister when the massacre took place. The Kahan Commission found him indirectly responsible, and he was forced to resign as defense minister. Yaron was also reprimanded and barred from field command positions for three years. If the appeals court decides to accept the case, Sharon could technically be arrested if he enters Belgium. But if Israel had ignored the case, the Belgian court could have issued an international warrant for his arrest. If the court decides to accept the case, Patrick Collignon, the Belgian investigative judge, will be able to continue his probe, which would be followed by legal proceedings that could go on for years. Secret documents reveal Israel knew of Phalange intentions The Guardian yesterday published a lengthy investigative report quoting extensively from what it claimed were documents from the long secret annex to the Kahan Commission of inquiry's report. According to the newspaper, the documents arrived as a "stack" delivered to the lawyers representing the Palestinians in the Belgian trial. They are typewritten and in Hebrew, and among other things, quote Phalangist leaders telling Israeli leaders - including Sharon and former chief of staff Rafael Eitan - about their plans to turn Sabra into a "zoo" and Chatila into a "parking lot." One quote has Bashir Gemayel, the Phalange leader and then-recently elected president of Lebanon, telling Menachem Navot, then-head of the Globe Division of the Mossad, that Lebanon might need "a few Deir Yassins" to solve what the Lebanese refer to as Lebanon's "demographic problem." Deir Yassin was a massacre of Palestinians by the Etzel near Jerusalem's Givat Shaul in 1948. Navot, like all other Israelis quoted in the article, refused to comment. Israeli sources last night, however, confirmed that despite some inaccuracies in the Guardian article, Phalange leaders did indeed refer to plans to turn Sabra and Chatila - before the massacres - into a zoo and parking lot. In February 1983, the Kahan Commission found that no Israeli was "directly responsible" for the massacre, but determined that Sharon bore "personal responsibility." It ruled that he was negligent in ignoring the possibility of bloodshed in the camps following the assassination of Gemayel, on September 14. But according to the document, even as the PLO began leaving Beirut on August 21, Sharon met Bashir and his father, Pierre Gemayel, to demand a new strike against the Palestinian presence in Lebanon. "Minutes of the meeting quote Sharon as saying: `A question was raised before, what would happen to the Palestinian camps once the terrorists withdraw... You've got to act... So that there be no terrorists you've got to clean the camps.' "Pierre Gemayel prevaricated," says the newspaper. "`We are in the midst of a political process of presidential elections... Bashir is the nominee... It is very important that calm is kept." "Sharon insisted," the newspaper went on, quoting directly from the minutes that eventually made their way to the Kahan Commission's secret annex. "`What would you do about the camps?' Bashir: `We are planning a real zoo.'" In his testimony to Kahan, Sharon claimed that no one imagined the Phalange would carry out a massacre in the camps. But according to the documents in Belgium, Sharon himself complained to Gemayel, 10 weeks before the massacre, that "`it is incumbent that we prevent several ugly things which have occurred - murders, rapes and stealing by some of your men.'" And, adds the newspaper, "in a meeting with American diplomats at the home of Johnny Abdo, Lebanon's military intelligence chief, Sharon proposed that the PLO fighters in Beirut be given `refuge' in Israel. `Although we are at a friend's house,' he said, according to the report of the meeting, `rest assured that they would be more secure in our hands!'" According to the newspaper, the documents quote then-Mossad chief Yitzhak Hofi telling the Kahan panel that "`the Phalangists talk about solving the Palestinian problem with a hand gesture whose meaning is physical elimination... I don't think anybody had any doubts about this... They raised the issue of Lebanon being unable to survive as long as this size of population existed there.'" Hofi refused to comment last night. And Elkana Harnof, then-IDF military intelligence colonel, in a summary of his testimony to Kahan, said, according to the newspaper's quotes from the documents, that "`It was possible to surmise from contacts with the Phalange leaders what were their intentions towards the Palestinians: `Sabra would become a zoo and Chatila Beirut's parking place'... When they participated in actions east of Bahamdoun [when they operated against the Druze] they ran straight to the villages and committed massacres.'" By Nitzan Horowitz and Yossi Melman --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- /hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=100148 close window <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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