LAURIE KING-IRANI, North American coordinator for the International Campaign for Justice for the Victims of Sabra and Shatila and a lecturer at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, King-Irani said today: “The recent decision by Belgium's highest court to proceed with the indictment of Israeli military officers and Lebanese militia leaders for the 1982 massacre of up to 2,500 civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon is a ground-breaking legal ruling for the global campaign against impunity for war crimes. The ruling will of course have a serious impact on Israeli-Belgian relations, but more profoundly, it begins to ‘give teeth’ to international law and advances the use of the principle of universal jurisdiction against war crimes and crimes against humanity, which is encoded in the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture. As long as Ariel Sharon is Israel's prime minister, he enjoys procedural immunity from prosecution, but the Belgian ruling gives a needed boost to cases against war criminals like Chad's Hissein Habre and Iraq's Saddam Hussein.”

Lawyers from Belgium will speak about the Sharon case at Princeton University on Friday; King-Irani can arrange interviews with them.
LAURIE KING-IRANI, coordinator@indictsharon.net,
http://www.indictsharon.net

For more information, contact:
Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
ipa@accuracy.org
http://www.accuracy.org

Please also read:"It's OK to Eat Belgian Chocolate", by Uri Avnery
http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english