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British Lawyer Files War Crimes Suit Against Israel’s Defense Minister to Be
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Mofaz
is accused of violations of the Geneva Conventions
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LONDON,
October 31 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A prominent British
human rights lawyer has urged his country to press war crimes charges
against Israel's hardline ex-army chief, General Shaul Mofaz,
officials said, as Mofaz accepted the post of Defense Minister in
hardline Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new government Thursday,
October 31.
Lawyer
Imran Kahn, a British national of Pakistani origin, filed his request
Tuesday, October 29, as Mofaz was in Britain on a fund-raising visit,
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
He
was responding to a British Muslim group who accused Mofaz of
responsibility as commander for violations of the Geneva Conventions.
The Israeli army is accused of using Palestinians as human shields,
assassinating activists, torturing prisoners, and destroying civilian
homes, the British daily newspaper, the Independent, reported.
Khan
sent a 17-page dossier to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who
passed it to Scotland Yard's crimes against humanity unit, said the Independent. Khan, who is representing families of Palestinian
victims, says the case can be investigated and tried in Britain
because all Geneva Convention signatories are obliged to enforce them,
wherever breaches are committed.
"It
is a mandatory obligation on the British police as signatory to the
[Geneva] Convention, that they search for people who are alleged to
have committed those breaches, and effectively bring them to
justice," Kahn told AFP.
In
his dossier, Khan accused Mofaz of breaching the Geneva Convention
banning the use of torture while he was head of the Israeli occupation
army.
Many
accusations relate to the Israeli attack on Jenin in April 2002, a
deadly incursion which provoked a plea from the Human Rights Watch
organization for a war crimes investigation, the British paper added.
Other
allegations relate to Israeli offensives across the occupied West Bank
and Gaza Strip during Mofaz's time as Chief of Staff. The Israeli
military regularly assassinates Palestinian resistance activists in
what it calls "targeted killings," the Independent reported.
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"It
is a mandatory obligation on the British police as signatory
to the [
Geneva
] Convention, that they search for people who are alleged to
have committed those breaches, and effectively bring them to
justice," Kahn said
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Mofaz
had further advocated kicking elected Palestinian President Yasser
Arafat out of the Palestinian territories. Israel TV showed him urging
Sharon to expel Arafat.
During
a joint visit to an occupation army base in the West Bank, Mofaz was
seen telling Sharon: “We should kick him out.” Sharon - apparently
unaware his comments were being recorded - replied, “I know.”
Mofaz continued: “This is an opportunity now that won’t return.”
Mofaz
has now left Britain, but Kahn insisted he intends to pursue the
matter regardless, saying: "That doesn't prevent Scotland Yard
from doing the investigation."
"I
am a lawyer, my part is to take proceedings," he said, adding:
"To decide whether he should be prosecuted or not is a political
question."
Hardline
Mofaz, a 52-year-old of Iranian origin, was appointed Israeli Defense
Minister Thursday in place of Labor party chief Binyamin Ben Eliezer,
who quit the national unity government in protest at continued budget
allocations to sprawling illegal Jewish settlements at the expense of
social services.
Kahn
had led the case for the prosecution in a high profile trial
surrounding the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black student stabbed to
death by a white gang in 1993, which had sparked fiery debate about
institutional racism in Britain .
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