| http://www.dailystar.com.lb/11_04_02/art4.asp
Earlier generation of war crimes may yet haunt Sharon ghosts rise from Sinai invasions of 1956 and 1967 Alleged execution of Egyptian and other Arab captives, both civilian and military, is coming to light Gamal Ismail Special to The Daily Star CAIRO: As the Israeli Army reoccupies Palestinian cities, towns, villages and refugee camps and angry protests sweep Egypt, a fresh cry has gone out from Cairo for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other Israeli military commanders to be tried as war criminals. Sharon’s military strategy in the West Bank, which has been roundly condemned by governments across the Arab world and beyond it, appears to be uppermost in the minds of those currently demanding that he face trial. But the request this time relates to crimes said to have been committed in earlier wars, against Egyptian and other Arab captives during the 1956 and 1967 conflicts. The claims are accompanied by documentation, and have back-up from witnesses offering testimony. The appeal was launched by a gathering of academics and journalists at Cairo University’s Journalism Graduates’ Association, which was convened to launch a recently published book, The Right of Blood by Mohammed Ismail Bassiouni, documenting evidence of war crimes committed by Israeli officers against Egyptian PoWs. Most of the information began coming to light in August 1995, when the Israeli press published a spate of confessions by former Israeli officers and soldiers regarding what was said to be the cold-blooded killing of large numbers of Egyptian and other Arab PoWs and civilian captives in the Sinai during the 1956 and 1967 Israeli invasions. The Israeli prime minister at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, warned of the damage the revelations would do to Israel, and appealed for them to cease. But he did not deny their substance, nor refute the accounts of the slaying of Egyptian prisoners in Sinai during the 1967 war when Rabin was chief of staff provided by former Israeli Army archivist Arieh Yitzhaki. But by far the most prominent figure implicated in war crimes in the 1956 campaign was Sharon. Sharon was commander of the Paratroop Brigade whose 890th battalion as detailed by Danny Wolf, a reserve lieutenant colonel who served in the unit at the time executed 49 Egyptian civilian quarry workers they had detained in Sinai. The account was confirmed by Wolf’s immediate superior, Aryeh Biro, who became a general. The same battalion also massacred more than 50 Egyptian civilians after spraying the truck they were in with gunfire after it was disabled. Sharon’s soldiers are said to have proceeded to tie the survivors’ hands behind their backs before shooting them dead too. It is claimed that battalion 890 also systematically executed the fleeing Egyptian soldiers it encountered as it made its way to the southern Sinai: they would surrender, hand over their arms and then be gunned down. The numbers said to have been summarily executed in this way vary, according to different Israeli accounts, but are estimated by Bassiouni to exceed 1,000. He also links Sharon to war crimes committed during the 1967 war, including the killing of hundreds of Egyptian PoWs at the Mitla pass on June 9, 1967. Their bodies, allegedly along with those of surviving wounded, were subsequently crushed into the earth under tank tracks. One surviving Egyptian PoW, Ahmed Abdel-Halim Shaaban, testifies to having seen Sharon present in person he identified him from the way the soldiers cheered him and lifted him into the air when the atrocities described took place. Shaaban’s account of captive Egyptian soldiers being executed is echoed by the testimony of other former PoWs interviewed by Bassiouni, who told of similar incidents in different parts of the Sinai during the 1967 hostilities. They also describe the way Egyptian prisoners were tortured after the war in the Atlit detention center, and charge that some captives disappeared without trace. Bassiouni’s book includes often chilling testimony from 45 former Egyptian civilian and military PoWs, as well as a list of captives who are still missing, and identifies sites of mass graves where executed Egyptian and Arab prisoners are said to have been buried. He stresses that the evidence points to a systematic policy of executing unarmed prisoners, apparently in compliance with military orders, after they had surrendered and before they could be transferred to detention centers where they would presumably be under the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Fuller details of what actually happened in the Sinai in 1967 are likely to be known by the Americans, whose spy ship, the USS Liberty, was patrolling off the coast at the time and eavesdropping on the battles. Speculation has never abated over why Israeli warplanes and gunboats sank the American vessel. The official explanation was “mistaken identity.” But two years ago, American journalist James Bamford published evidence that the Liberty was eliminated because it was a witness to the massacres of Egyptian PoWs. He believes US intelligence agencies hold information about the killings gathered at the time by means of spy planes and other surveillance, and that it should be published. The Israeli confessions published in 1995 caused a wave of public indignation in Egypt, and no fewer that 124 lawsuits were filed in Egyptian courts in connection with them, demanding investigation, condemnation or compensation. They were thrown out on grounds that the Egyptian judiciary was not competent to deal with the issue. Egyptian lawyers and human rights activists produced a legal dossier, including the testimonies of former PoWs and survivors, which they hoped could form the basis of an international court case. There is no statute of limitations on war crimes, and the execution of hundreds of unarmed captives fits that description by any gauge. But despite some official statements which appeared designed to make temporary political capital out of the issue of the slain PoWs the Egyptian authorities made no serious attempt to turn the issue into the subject of an international legal case. Fresh interest in pursuing the case was aroused by last year’s attempt by victims of the Sabra and Shatila massacre to prosecute Sharon and others implicated in the 1982 killings at the Beirut Palestinian refugee camps in the Belgian courts. Given Sharon’s current military offensive in the West Bank, calls for him to face trial on these earlier charges are more likely to intensify than to abate. Gamal Ismail is an Egyptian journalist and writer |
