Israelis File Complaint Against PA Chairman Arafat in Belgium

Reuters

Israelis File Complaint Against PA Chairman Arafat in Belgium

Haaretz

2001-11-27

BRUSSELS – A group of Israelis filed a complaint in Brussels on Tuesday against Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat and various Palestinian organizations, accusing them of crimes against humanity.

The plaintiffs were taking advantage of a controversial 1993 Belgian law that allows the country’s courts to prosecute foreigners for human rights violations committed outside Belgium.

Lawyers representing about 30 Israelis filed the complaint with a Belgian examining magistrate, holding Arafat and the groups responsible for a series of attacks including an August 9 suicide bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria that killed 16 people. “The complaint is against Arafat and many organizations like the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian police, the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization),” one of the lawyers, Yves Oshinski, told Reuters.

Oshinski, who represents a group called the Terror Victims Association, said the complaint cited attacks dating back to 1974.

Another group, the World Committee for Justice and Peace, plans to file in the coming days a similar complaint in Belgium against Arafat and his lieutenants on behalf of 20 Israeli claimants.

The two complaints come a day before a Brussels court is to hear arguments on whether Prime Minister Ariel Sharon can be prosecuted for alleged crimes against humanity following the filing of three complaints against him.

The Lebanese and Palestinian plaintiffs are also acting under the 1993 law, which has strained relations between Israel and Belgium at a time when Brussels holds the rotating presidency of the European Union and is trying to play a more active role in Middle East peacemaking.

The law was first used in a case against four Rwandans for participating in the country’s 1994 genocide.

Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt got a hostile reception in Jerusalem in early November. The city’s mayor suggested he “go to hell”.

Sharon dealt Belgium a stinging rebuff by urging the EU to stop funding the Palestinian Authority.

The Israeli plaintiffs from the Terror Victims Association include a survivor of a 1974 attack by Palestinian gunmen on high school students on a field trip in northern Israel in which 22 people were killed and 60 wounded.

Others include relatives of soldiers killed by Palestinians resisting Israel’s occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.