anyone feel like discussing world war three?
- Thread starter pagan2002
- Start date
mehdi.i.e.e.e
New Metal Member
- Feb 28, 2002
- 4,249
- 4
- 0
- 42
i thought that may interest some of you interested about war & opression.
peace,
mehdi
____________________________________________________
Israel/Occupied Territories: Jenin War Crimes Investigation Needed - Human Rights Watch Report Finds Laws of War Violations(Jenin, May 3, 2002)
Evidence suggests that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) committed war crimes in the military operation in the Jenin refugee camp, Human Rights Watch charged in a report issued today after a week-long investigation. Human Rights Watch did not find evidence to support claims that the IDF massacred hundreds of Palestinians in the camp.
In its forty-eight page report, "Israel, the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Authority Territories: Jenin: IDF Military Operations," Human Rights Watch identified fifty-two Palestinians who were killed during the operation, of whom twenty-two were civilians. Many of the civilians were killed willfully or unlawfully. Human Rights Watch also found that the IDF used Palestinian civilians as "human shields" and used indiscriminate and excessive force during the operation.
"The abuses we documented in Jenin are extremely serious, and in some cases appear to be war crimes," said Peter Bouckaert, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch and a member of the investigative team. "Criminal investigations are needed to ascertain individual responsibility for the most serious violations. Such investigations are first and foremost the duty of the Israeli government, but the international community needs to ensure that meaningful accountability occurs."
A Human Rights Watch team of three experienced investigators spent seven days in the Jenin refugee camp, gathering detailed accounts from victims and witnesses and carefully corroborating and independently crosschecking their accounts with those of others to reconstruct a detailed picture of events in the camp in April 2002. The IDF has not agreed to Human Rights Watch's repeated requests for information regarding its military incursions into the West Bank and Gaza.
Bouckaert, who headed up earlier Human Rights Watch investigations into wartime abuses in Chechnya, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, said that the Jenin events clearly warrant further investigation. He noted that the hallmark of a professional army is to take seriously the need to establish accountability for serious violations of the laws of war.
"There have been widely divergent accounts of what happened in Jenin. A U.N. fact-finding mission could contribute significantly to the search for the truth in Jenin," Bouckaert said. "Israel should cooperate fully with whatever new U.N. fact-finding mission might be established, and there should be no immunity for persons implicated in the most serious violations of the laws of war."
On April 3, 2002, the IDF launched a major military operation in the Jenin refugee camp, home to some fourteen thousand Palestinian refugees. An estimated eighty to one hundred armed Palestinians took part in the fighting. Israel claims the camp had been the launching ground for many of the suicide bombings that have killed and maimed over one hundred Israeli civilians in recent months. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly condemned this deliberate killing of civilians. Palestinian armed militants had also planted many explosive devices in the camp prior to and during the IDF incursion.
Among the twenty-two civilian deaths documented during this investigation were the following:
Fifty-seven-year-old Kamal Zghair, a wheelchair-bound man who was shot and then run over by IDF tanks on April 10 as he was moving in his wheelchair equipped with a white flag down a major road in Jenin;
Thirty-seven-year-old Jamal Fayid, a paralyzed man, who was crushed in the rubble of his home on April 7 after IDF soldiers refused to allow his family the time to remove him from their home before a bulldozer destroyed it;
Fourteen-year-old Faris Zaiben, who was killed by fire from an IDF armored car as he went to buy groceries when the IDF-imposed curfew was finally lifted on April 11; and
Fifty-two-year-old 'Afaf Disuqi, who was killed on April 5 by an explosive charge that IDF soldiers had placed at her front door as she went to open it for the soldiers;
In one case involving a wounded Palestinian militant, IDF soldiers for several hours prevented medical help from reaching him. The soldiers then killed the man, who had been left close to a hospital near the camp and was no longer armed or taking active part in the fighting.
Human Rights Watch also found evidence of indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force by the IDF. U.S.-supplied helicopters fired anti-tank missiles and other ordinance into the camp, in some cases making insufficient efforts to identify legitimate military targets and avoid hitting civilian houses. The helicopters struck many houses in Jenin refugee camp that were inhabited only by civilians, and where no Palestinian fighters were present. In one of many such cases, a tank shell and two helicopter-fired TOW anti-tank missiles hit the house of Kamal Tawalba, a father of fourteen children, on April 6. No fighters were present in the home. When Tawalba and his family tried to leave their burning home, IDF soldiers in the vicinity shot at them.
In another case, a sixty-year-old woman was killed when a helicopter fired a missile directly into her top-floor apartment although there were no armed Palestinians in the building or the immediate vicinity.
The IDF's campaign caused extensive and disproportionate destruction of the civilian infrastructure of the camp, particularly in the Hawashin district following an April 9 ambush of Israeli soldiers there. In contrast to other parts of the camp where armored bulldozers were used mainly to widen streets, in Hawashin they razed the entire district. Throughout the camp, at least 140 buildings were completely leveled, many of them multi-family dwellings, and more than 200 others were severely damaged, leaving an estimated 4,000 people, more than a quarter of the population, homeless. More than one hundred of those buildings were in Hawashin district.
The extensive, systematic, and deliberate leveling of the entire district was clearly disproportionate to any military objective that Israel aimed to achieve. Establishing whether this devastation so exceeded military necessity as to constitute wanton destruction-a war crime-should be one of the highest priorities for any future U.N. fact-finding team, said Bouckaert.
Human Rights Watch also documented cases in which Israeli troops used Palestinian civilians as human shields, a practice prohibited under international humanitarian law. In one case, IDF soldiers forced eight civilians to shield them by making them stand on a balcony while the soldiers fired at Palestinian gunmen. Kamal Tawalba and his fourteen-year-old son were among them. Tawalba described how the soldiers kept them for three hours in the line of fire, and used his and his son's shoulders to rest their rifles as they fired.
"Even accepting the Israeli charge that Palestinian groups who used the refugee camp as a base were responsible for attacking Israeli civilians," said Bouckaert, "this does not excuse the IDF violations documented in this report." Bouckaert added that Human Rights Watch found no evidence that Palestinian gunmen forced civilians to serve as human shields during the battles in the camp, and no indication that Palestinian gunmen had prevented Palestinian civilians from leaving the camp.
"As in our prior investigations of IDF operations, we also found numerous cases where the IDF coerced Palestinian civilians to take part in military operations," Bouckaert said. "Palestinian civilians were forced, sometimes at gunpoint, to accompany IDF troops during their searches of homes and to carry out some of the most dangerous tasks during these searches."
During most of "Operation Defensive Shield," the IDF blocked emergency medical access to Jenin camp. Soldiers repeatedly fired on Red Crescent ambulances, and in one case shot to death a uniformed nurse, twenty-seven-year-old Farwa Jammal, who had come to the assistance of a wounded man. In another case, fifty-eight-year-old Mariam Wishahi died in her home thirty-six hours after she was injured by shrapnel; IDF soldiers repeatedly prevented ambulances from reaching her home, located just a few hundred meters from Jenin's main hospital.
During the period the IDF had control of the camp, the Israeli authorities had responsibility under international humanitarian law for the welfare of the civilian population. Yet Israeli authorities denied humanitarian organizations access to the camp during their offensive, and continued to prevent humanitarian access to the refugee camp for days after military operations had ceased, despite great need.
peace,
mehdi
____________________________________________________
Israel/Occupied Territories: Jenin War Crimes Investigation Needed - Human Rights Watch Report Finds Laws of War Violations(Jenin, May 3, 2002)
Evidence suggests that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) committed war crimes in the military operation in the Jenin refugee camp, Human Rights Watch charged in a report issued today after a week-long investigation. Human Rights Watch did not find evidence to support claims that the IDF massacred hundreds of Palestinians in the camp.
In its forty-eight page report, "Israel, the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Authority Territories: Jenin: IDF Military Operations," Human Rights Watch identified fifty-two Palestinians who were killed during the operation, of whom twenty-two were civilians. Many of the civilians were killed willfully or unlawfully. Human Rights Watch also found that the IDF used Palestinian civilians as "human shields" and used indiscriminate and excessive force during the operation.
"The abuses we documented in Jenin are extremely serious, and in some cases appear to be war crimes," said Peter Bouckaert, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch and a member of the investigative team. "Criminal investigations are needed to ascertain individual responsibility for the most serious violations. Such investigations are first and foremost the duty of the Israeli government, but the international community needs to ensure that meaningful accountability occurs."
A Human Rights Watch team of three experienced investigators spent seven days in the Jenin refugee camp, gathering detailed accounts from victims and witnesses and carefully corroborating and independently crosschecking their accounts with those of others to reconstruct a detailed picture of events in the camp in April 2002. The IDF has not agreed to Human Rights Watch's repeated requests for information regarding its military incursions into the West Bank and Gaza.
Bouckaert, who headed up earlier Human Rights Watch investigations into wartime abuses in Chechnya, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, said that the Jenin events clearly warrant further investigation. He noted that the hallmark of a professional army is to take seriously the need to establish accountability for serious violations of the laws of war.
"There have been widely divergent accounts of what happened in Jenin. A U.N. fact-finding mission could contribute significantly to the search for the truth in Jenin," Bouckaert said. "Israel should cooperate fully with whatever new U.N. fact-finding mission might be established, and there should be no immunity for persons implicated in the most serious violations of the laws of war."
On April 3, 2002, the IDF launched a major military operation in the Jenin refugee camp, home to some fourteen thousand Palestinian refugees. An estimated eighty to one hundred armed Palestinians took part in the fighting. Israel claims the camp had been the launching ground for many of the suicide bombings that have killed and maimed over one hundred Israeli civilians in recent months. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly condemned this deliberate killing of civilians. Palestinian armed militants had also planted many explosive devices in the camp prior to and during the IDF incursion.
Among the twenty-two civilian deaths documented during this investigation were the following:
Fifty-seven-year-old Kamal Zghair, a wheelchair-bound man who was shot and then run over by IDF tanks on April 10 as he was moving in his wheelchair equipped with a white flag down a major road in Jenin;
Thirty-seven-year-old Jamal Fayid, a paralyzed man, who was crushed in the rubble of his home on April 7 after IDF soldiers refused to allow his family the time to remove him from their home before a bulldozer destroyed it;
Fourteen-year-old Faris Zaiben, who was killed by fire from an IDF armored car as he went to buy groceries when the IDF-imposed curfew was finally lifted on April 11; and
Fifty-two-year-old 'Afaf Disuqi, who was killed on April 5 by an explosive charge that IDF soldiers had placed at her front door as she went to open it for the soldiers;
In one case involving a wounded Palestinian militant, IDF soldiers for several hours prevented medical help from reaching him. The soldiers then killed the man, who had been left close to a hospital near the camp and was no longer armed or taking active part in the fighting.
Human Rights Watch also found evidence of indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force by the IDF. U.S.-supplied helicopters fired anti-tank missiles and other ordinance into the camp, in some cases making insufficient efforts to identify legitimate military targets and avoid hitting civilian houses. The helicopters struck many houses in Jenin refugee camp that were inhabited only by civilians, and where no Palestinian fighters were present. In one of many such cases, a tank shell and two helicopter-fired TOW anti-tank missiles hit the house of Kamal Tawalba, a father of fourteen children, on April 6. No fighters were present in the home. When Tawalba and his family tried to leave their burning home, IDF soldiers in the vicinity shot at them.
In another case, a sixty-year-old woman was killed when a helicopter fired a missile directly into her top-floor apartment although there were no armed Palestinians in the building or the immediate vicinity.
The IDF's campaign caused extensive and disproportionate destruction of the civilian infrastructure of the camp, particularly in the Hawashin district following an April 9 ambush of Israeli soldiers there. In contrast to other parts of the camp where armored bulldozers were used mainly to widen streets, in Hawashin they razed the entire district. Throughout the camp, at least 140 buildings were completely leveled, many of them multi-family dwellings, and more than 200 others were severely damaged, leaving an estimated 4,000 people, more than a quarter of the population, homeless. More than one hundred of those buildings were in Hawashin district.
The extensive, systematic, and deliberate leveling of the entire district was clearly disproportionate to any military objective that Israel aimed to achieve. Establishing whether this devastation so exceeded military necessity as to constitute wanton destruction-a war crime-should be one of the highest priorities for any future U.N. fact-finding team, said Bouckaert.
Human Rights Watch also documented cases in which Israeli troops used Palestinian civilians as human shields, a practice prohibited under international humanitarian law. In one case, IDF soldiers forced eight civilians to shield them by making them stand on a balcony while the soldiers fired at Palestinian gunmen. Kamal Tawalba and his fourteen-year-old son were among them. Tawalba described how the soldiers kept them for three hours in the line of fire, and used his and his son's shoulders to rest their rifles as they fired.
"Even accepting the Israeli charge that Palestinian groups who used the refugee camp as a base were responsible for attacking Israeli civilians," said Bouckaert, "this does not excuse the IDF violations documented in this report." Bouckaert added that Human Rights Watch found no evidence that Palestinian gunmen forced civilians to serve as human shields during the battles in the camp, and no indication that Palestinian gunmen had prevented Palestinian civilians from leaving the camp.
"As in our prior investigations of IDF operations, we also found numerous cases where the IDF coerced Palestinian civilians to take part in military operations," Bouckaert said. "Palestinian civilians were forced, sometimes at gunpoint, to accompany IDF troops during their searches of homes and to carry out some of the most dangerous tasks during these searches."
During most of "Operation Defensive Shield," the IDF blocked emergency medical access to Jenin camp. Soldiers repeatedly fired on Red Crescent ambulances, and in one case shot to death a uniformed nurse, twenty-seven-year-old Farwa Jammal, who had come to the assistance of a wounded man. In another case, fifty-eight-year-old Mariam Wishahi died in her home thirty-six hours after she was injured by shrapnel; IDF soldiers repeatedly prevented ambulances from reaching her home, located just a few hundred meters from Jenin's main hospital.
During the period the IDF had control of the camp, the Israeli authorities had responsibility under international humanitarian law for the welfare of the civilian population. Yet Israeli authorities denied humanitarian organizations access to the camp during their offensive, and continued to prevent humanitarian access to the refugee camp for days after military operations had ceased, despite great need.
i agree.
still it happened before, not forever but it did happen.(read "the wisdom of the wyrd" by brian bates.
Russell
__
demon talented
enduring iconoclast
I would sincerely doubt Jews make up one third of the voters in America. I would think that would mean a good majority of America wasn't voting because Jews make up less than 1% of the world population to begin with... Yes, all religion is shit. Saying it won't make a believer not believe though (ha, one could only wish). That's why they are the believers... Everyone should be allowed to have their right to belief in whatever they choose as long this does not impose upon the freedom of others.
If you're bored:
http://members.aol.com/svennord/cows.htm
(rather funny site)
I like surrealism.
If you're bored:
http://members.aol.com/svennord/cows.htm
(rather funny site)
I like surrealism.
i'll try to make this quick...
1.the world is under very bad influences, they may well be inter-dimensional.
2.palestine/israel will trigger nuclear exchanges in my opinion and it only takes a few lunatics to do it. asia is up for serious badness (BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS, THE WORLD WILL ERUPT BECAUSE OF IT) to be honest i think religions have been bad for a long time.
3.read the bible code...
www.biblecodesdigest.com
or type michael drosnin or bible code into a search engine.
4.anyway, that land belongs to no-one...
5.there is a truth to be found in the universe and some people can understand it to our own, limited degree.
6.the lyrics certain people write says more about the truth of life than the entire islamic/christian/jewish/almost any faith.
7. i dont think all religion is shit... i just think they are shit at the moment, look up the wisdom of wyrd or any ancient religion and you'll find some elements of infinty/reality/eternity
but never mind... what will be will be
1.the world is under very bad influences, they may well be inter-dimensional.
2.palestine/israel will trigger nuclear exchanges in my opinion and it only takes a few lunatics to do it. asia is up for serious badness (BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS, THE WORLD WILL ERUPT BECAUSE OF IT) to be honest i think religions have been bad for a long time.
3.read the bible code...
www.biblecodesdigest.com
or type michael drosnin or bible code into a search engine.
4.anyway, that land belongs to no-one...
5.there is a truth to be found in the universe and some people can understand it to our own, limited degree.
6.the lyrics certain people write says more about the truth of life than the entire islamic/christian/jewish/almost any faith.
7. i dont think all religion is shit... i just think they are shit at the moment, look up the wisdom of wyrd or any ancient religion and you'll find some elements of infinty/reality/eternity
but never mind... what will be will be
Oxiplegatz
Passenger
Originally posted by pagan2002
but never mind... what will be will be
I think I understand now why I'm so addicted to Anathema...
demon talented
enduring iconoclast
Well, I didn't mean it in an anti-spiritual sense. I personally just cannot agree with the comformity of beliefs (not to mention, like now, the intolerance it can bring). I never have a problem with others' beliefs as long as they do not interfere with others. That's my gripe...
Russell
__
Don Corleone
Emre
cant agree with you more. but i prefer to put it this way: all religions, in essence are good, but it is some individuals that fuck them up. religion isnt shit: HUMANITY IS SICK.
mehdi.i.e.e.e
New Metal Member
- Feb 28, 2002
- 4,249
- 4
- 0
- 42
how fucked could that be? Bush asking for palestinians to dump Arafat? why didn't he ask Israelians to dump Ariel 'nazi' Sharon as well? Bush is a partial pig, he's a sell out!
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...1&u=/ap/20020624/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_mideast_37
peace,
mehdi
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...1&u=/ap/20020624/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_mideast_37
peace,
mehdi
Don Corleone
Emre
mehdi.i.e.e.e
New Metal Member
- Feb 28, 2002
- 4,249
- 4
- 0
- 42
another exemple of how partial the occident is in that conflict :
Belgian Court Dismisses Sharon War Crimes Suit
A Brussels appeals court threw out a lawsuit against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ( news - web sites) on Wednesday, ruling he was immune from investigation in Belgium over his alleged role in a 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees.
"What the court decided is that the complaint against Sharon ... is not admissible because of the principle of Belgian law that crimes committed in other countries cannot be prosecuted in Belgium unless the author or presumed author has been found in Belgium," a court spokesman said.
The ruling deals a major blow to Belgium's law giving the country's courts the right to try foreigners for serious human rights abuses wherever they are committed.
It was under this controversial law that a group of Palestinian and Lebanese filed the complaint last year, accusing Sharon of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Michael Verhaeghe, one of the lawyers for the group of Palestinians, told reporters that his clients would appeal to the country's Supreme Court of Appeal.
"We are not satisfied with this," he said. "It completely undermines the scope of universal jurisdiction. We are appealing to the Supreme Court. The fight goes on, that's clear."
In Lebanon, Palestinian refugees read the ruling as a sign that Europe had joined the United States in backing Israel in its conflict with Palestinians, and that they could expect no justice in its courts.
"There were already steps to head off the court proceedings, but they let them go on to display a sort of fraudulent democracy," said Hussein al-Jamal, a 42-year-old resident of the Rashidiyeh camp in south Lebanon.
"MORE LAW THAN POLITICS"
But there was jubilation among Sharon's backers when, after a nail-biting delay of nearly two hours, photocopies of the 22-page ruling were distributed from a dusty room on the corner of Brussels' Palais de Justice.
"It's a lawsuit that started with more politics than law and it is lucky that the outcome is more law than politics," Daniel Shek, director of European Affairs at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, told reporters at the court. "It's what we considered a logical outcome, we trusted the system and the system did not let us down."
In Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told reporters: "I think they shouldn't even have tried to (bring the case to court). One nation cannot judge another nation. A nation that doesn't, fortunately, have to fight terror and war will hardly understand a nation that has to do it."
Sharon was defense minister in 1982 when an Israeli-backed Lebanese militia killed hundreds of refugees at the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut, then occupied by Israel. The following year, an Israeli commission found him indirectly responsible.
A criminal investigation was suspended last September pending a ruling on Belgium's jurisdiction.
Two previous rulings had already chipped away at the validity of the law, which has caused embarrassment for the Belgian government and strained its ties with Israel.
In February, the International Court of Justice at the Hague ( news - web sites) snubbed Belgian claims of universal jurisdiction by upholding the immunity of former Congolese Foreign Minister Yerodia Aboulaye Ndombasi from prosecution in Belgium.
The decision resulted in an order to cancel Belgium's international arrest warrant against him, issued in 2000, for crimes against humanity.
In an another precedent-setting ruling two months later, the Brussels appeals court threw out a case against Yerodia, who was accused of inciting racial hatred, on the grounds that he had not been found in Belgium.
CATASTROPHE SCENARIO
It was on this ground of links between the accused and Belgium -- and not diplomatic immunity -- that the investigation into Sharon was halted by the appeals court Wednesday.
"This decision is a great disappointment not only to the victims of the massacres of Sabra and Shatila but to atrocity victims everywhere who have placed their hopes for justice in the Belgian courts," said Reed Brody, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch.
Montserrat Carreras of rights group Amnesty International, pointing out that if the case had been thrown out on immunity grounds it could have been taken up again when Sharon left office, said Wednesday's ruling was "the catastrophe scenario."
Lawyer Verhaeghe said his clients' case in the Supreme Court of Appeal would now hang on whether it could be proved that Sharon was in Belgium in 1987. Two liberal Belgian senators said they would introduce a bill in the senate for a change in the law to ensure that people who are not in Belgium can be prosecuted.
"The bill is ready. It is just a matter of days," senator Vincent Van Quickenborne, a Flemish liberal, said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...=/nm/20020626/wl_nm/crime_belgium_sharon_dc_4
Belgian Court Dismisses Sharon War Crimes Suit
A Brussels appeals court threw out a lawsuit against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ( news - web sites) on Wednesday, ruling he was immune from investigation in Belgium over his alleged role in a 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees.
"What the court decided is that the complaint against Sharon ... is not admissible because of the principle of Belgian law that crimes committed in other countries cannot be prosecuted in Belgium unless the author or presumed author has been found in Belgium," a court spokesman said.
The ruling deals a major blow to Belgium's law giving the country's courts the right to try foreigners for serious human rights abuses wherever they are committed.
It was under this controversial law that a group of Palestinian and Lebanese filed the complaint last year, accusing Sharon of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Michael Verhaeghe, one of the lawyers for the group of Palestinians, told reporters that his clients would appeal to the country's Supreme Court of Appeal.
"We are not satisfied with this," he said. "It completely undermines the scope of universal jurisdiction. We are appealing to the Supreme Court. The fight goes on, that's clear."
In Lebanon, Palestinian refugees read the ruling as a sign that Europe had joined the United States in backing Israel in its conflict with Palestinians, and that they could expect no justice in its courts.
"There were already steps to head off the court proceedings, but they let them go on to display a sort of fraudulent democracy," said Hussein al-Jamal, a 42-year-old resident of the Rashidiyeh camp in south Lebanon.
"MORE LAW THAN POLITICS"
But there was jubilation among Sharon's backers when, after a nail-biting delay of nearly two hours, photocopies of the 22-page ruling were distributed from a dusty room on the corner of Brussels' Palais de Justice.
"It's a lawsuit that started with more politics than law and it is lucky that the outcome is more law than politics," Daniel Shek, director of European Affairs at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, told reporters at the court. "It's what we considered a logical outcome, we trusted the system and the system did not let us down."
In Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told reporters: "I think they shouldn't even have tried to (bring the case to court). One nation cannot judge another nation. A nation that doesn't, fortunately, have to fight terror and war will hardly understand a nation that has to do it."
Sharon was defense minister in 1982 when an Israeli-backed Lebanese militia killed hundreds of refugees at the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut, then occupied by Israel. The following year, an Israeli commission found him indirectly responsible.
A criminal investigation was suspended last September pending a ruling on Belgium's jurisdiction.
Two previous rulings had already chipped away at the validity of the law, which has caused embarrassment for the Belgian government and strained its ties with Israel.
In February, the International Court of Justice at the Hague ( news - web sites) snubbed Belgian claims of universal jurisdiction by upholding the immunity of former Congolese Foreign Minister Yerodia Aboulaye Ndombasi from prosecution in Belgium.
The decision resulted in an order to cancel Belgium's international arrest warrant against him, issued in 2000, for crimes against humanity.
In an another precedent-setting ruling two months later, the Brussels appeals court threw out a case against Yerodia, who was accused of inciting racial hatred, on the grounds that he had not been found in Belgium.
CATASTROPHE SCENARIO
It was on this ground of links between the accused and Belgium -- and not diplomatic immunity -- that the investigation into Sharon was halted by the appeals court Wednesday.
"This decision is a great disappointment not only to the victims of the massacres of Sabra and Shatila but to atrocity victims everywhere who have placed their hopes for justice in the Belgian courts," said Reed Brody, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch.
Montserrat Carreras of rights group Amnesty International, pointing out that if the case had been thrown out on immunity grounds it could have been taken up again when Sharon left office, said Wednesday's ruling was "the catastrophe scenario."
Lawyer Verhaeghe said his clients' case in the Supreme Court of Appeal would now hang on whether it could be proved that Sharon was in Belgium in 1987. Two liberal Belgian senators said they would introduce a bill in the senate for a change in the law to ensure that people who are not in Belgium can be prosecuted.
"The bill is ready. It is just a matter of days," senator Vincent Van Quickenborne, a Flemish liberal, said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...=/nm/20020626/wl_nm/crime_belgium_sharon_dc_4
mehdi.i.e.e.e
New Metal Member
- Feb 28, 2002
- 4,249
- 4
- 0
- 42
hey, i just read that : since the beginning of the Second Intifada [september 2000], 548 jews and 1.427 palestinians have been killed. it's "funny" to see that the poor little country attacked by obnoxious terrorists had less victims that the evil one. strange, huh?
Don Corleone
Emre
this is hilarious. do these guys think that the public is THAT stupid? do they think that no one can read between the lines?
it doesnt matter if people read between the lines or not. it wont prevent them doing whatever they want.
killing sucks no matter what side but if some one wants to blow their nuts off with a bomb strapped to themselves be my guest,just don't take out innocent folks along the way.at this rate we'll all be kissing our arses goodbye soon coz some crazy shithead is bound to develope an itch in his finger and push the "big" button.mankind is kinda fucked me thinks.
mehdi.i.e.e.e
New Metal Member
- Feb 28, 2002
- 4,249
- 4
- 0
- 42
just don't take out innocent folks along the way? who do you think Israel kills in Palestin? only terrorists? actually the right question should be do Israel kill terrorists sometimes?
http://www.hrw.org
http://www.hrw.org
Similar threads
