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Egypt to Host Lawyer in Sharon War Crimes Case
CAIRO, July 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A lawyer filing a "war crimes" case in Belgium against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been invited to a conference in Cairo focusing on Israeli racism and human rights abuses against Arabs and Muslims, organizers
told news agencies.
The Belgian lawyer, Luc Walleyn, is the "guest of honor" at the event starting on Thursday, where Arab human rights groups will prepare for a U.N. conference in South Africa in late August and early September, they said.
Israel, backed by the United States, has been lobbying governments around the world to drop the topic of the Middle East conflict and Zionism from the Durban conference agenda.
The regional Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), which organized the meeting, said Walleyn would chair a session on Israel's ethnic cleansing crimes on Saturday.
Walleyn is litigating a case against Prime Minister Sharon before the Belgian courts on behalf of the hundreds of victims of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres in Beirut. Sharon was found to be responsible by both the Israeli government and the international community for the deaths of hundreds of people seeking shelter at the refugee camps.
The massacre was perpetrated by a Lebanese Christian militia, the Phalange, in an area under the control of the Israeli army at a time when Sharon was defense minister and thus responsible for the safety of the people in the camps. Sharon had overall command of forces in Beirut in 1982. He authorized the entry of Israel-backed Christian militias to refugee camps, where they initiated a killing spree that lasted for three days.
The conference will tackle the issues of slavery and servitude, minorities, globalization, indigenous people, Islamophobia, and women's status. But, it will also put the spotlight on alleged Israeli racism, CIHRS officials said.
The Cairo conference will conclude with a declaration on the "liquidation of Apartheid regimes." It will be sent to a preparatory committee in Geneva on July 30-August 10, they said.
The declaration will then be sent to the full World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa from August 28-September 7.
CIHRS Director, Bahedeen Hassan, told AFP that the United States and Israel have exerted enormous pressure on the participants to drop "Israeli racism" from the agenda of the official U.N. conference attended by government representatives.
But, non-government organizations (NGOs), which are meeting simultaneously in Durban, are in general agreement on the subject, he said.
Earlier this month, the New York-based Human Rights Watch called for an investigation into Sharon's history over the issue and the Sabra and Shatila massacres.
The BBC also recently aired a documentary about Sharon's role in the 1982 atrocities. The documentary featured a former U.S. envoy to the Middle East suggesting that Sharon could be convicted of war crimes.
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