BRUSSELS, June 26 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Hopes of the families of the victims of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon, to have Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tried in Belgium for war crimes were dashed Wednesday, June 26, when judges declared the case inadmissible.

The indictment chamber of the Brussels appeals court ruled that the case - lodged a year ago - could not proceed because Sharon was not in Belgium, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Twenty-three Palestinians filed a suit against Sharon to have him tried in Belgium for his role in the September 1982 massacres of up to 2,000 Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, perpetrated by Israel with the help of the Israeli-allied Christian phalangist militia during Israel's invasion of Lebanon.

They based their case on a “universal competence” law that enables Belgian courts to try cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, regardless of where the outrages took place.

Summing up Wednesday's ruling, court spokesman Guy Delvoie said: “The Belgian courts have competence with regards to cases that concern serious violations of human rights.”

“But for cases based on universal competence ... it is necessary that the alleged perpetrators be in the territory of the kingdom [of Belgium]. Otherwise they are inadmissible," he said.

A Sabra and Shatila survivor who lost her father and six brothers in the massacre told reporters: “My disappointment with Belgian justice is complete.”

“I would have preferred to have died than to hear this,” said the 37-year-old survivor, Souad Srour El Marai, who was herself left handicapped after she was raped and injured during the massacre.

Human rights groups deplored the ruling. New York-based Human Rights Watch said: “This decision is a great disappointment not only to the victims of the massacre at Sabra and Shatila but to atrocity victims everywhere who have placed their hopes for justice in the Belgian courts.”

”It's a terrible disappointment today,” said Montserrat Carreras, representing Amnesty International. “It's even more so given that the International Criminal Court is to go into effect from July 1,” he said. “It's a terrible blow for universal justice in Belgium.”

But Daniel Shek, director of European affairs at the Israeli foreign ministry, hailed the ruling in the Sharon case.

“It started with more politics than law,” said Shek of the case. “It is happy that the outcome is more law than politics. We trusted the system.”

Sharon was Israel's defense minister when the massacre in Sabra and Shatila occurred in September 1982.

At the time, the Israeli army also invaded southern Lebanon, under the pretext of halting cross-border attacks on Israeli settlements.

Sharon was forced to resign as defense minister in 1983 after an Israeli tribunal found him indirectly responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

He went on to hold several other senior government posts, before he led his right-wing Likud party to election victory in 1999 and became prime minister.

Belgium's law of universal competence was put to the test last year when a court in Brussels convicted four Rwandans for their role in the country's 1994 massacre of Tutsis and of Hutu moderates.

But it suffered a setback earlier this year when the International Court of Justice in The Hague cancelled a Belgian arrest warrant for a former foreign minister from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who had been named in a separate case.

And on Wednesday, the chamber that ruled in the Sharon case also rejected a separate prosecution naming Cote Ivoire's president Laurent Gbagbo, his predecessor Robert Guei and two Ivorian government ministers.

The case against the four had been lodged by 150 people who said they had been victims or witnesses of torture, rape and killings at the hands of Ivorian security forces.

In a report published on its website, Amnesty said that the Belgian Parliament, in enacting the 1993 law providing for universal jurisdiction over war crimes, as well as in its 1999 amendment to that law extending its scope to crimes against humanity and genocide, intended to provide Belgian courts with the full extent of universal jurisdiction over these crimes permitted under international law.

In fact, the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 authorize Belgium to open an investigation for grave breaches of humanitarian law regardless of the location of the suspect and to seek the extradition of any person suspected of grave breaches with a view to exercising universal jurisdiction even if that person has never been in that country, it said.

The next step in this case is an appeal to the Court of Cassation. If this unfortunate decision is upheld on appeal, Amnesty International will seek an amendment of the Belgian law to ensure that Belgium can continue to act on behalf of the international community in investigating and prosecuting the worst possible crimes in the world when states where the crime occurred have failed to fulfill their responsibilities under international law.

”The massacres of Sabra and Shatila refugee camps were war crimes and need to be fully and impartially investigated,” said Amnesty International.

”International law to combat impunity must not be undermined, especially as the International Criminal Court will enter into force on 1 July.”