{"id":5280,"date":"2009-03-05T18:07:26","date_gmt":"2009-03-05T17:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=5280"},"modified":"2009-03-05T18:07:26","modified_gmt":"2009-03-05T17:07:26","slug":"iran-plans-war-crimes-trials-for-israelis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/iran-plans-war-crimes-trials-for-israelis\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Plans War Crimes Trials for Israelis"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Robert Mackey<\/span><\/a>\u00a0|<\/p>\n

On the same day that the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant<\/span><\/a> for the president of Sudan on war crimes charges, Iran\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, opened an international conference<\/span><\/a> in Tehran that will press Interpol to help Iranian prosecutors arrest 15 Israeli leaders on war crimes charges related to the recent war in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, discussions are reportedly continuing in The Hague on the question of the international court\u2019s authority to open an investigation of its own into actions carried out in Gaza, since the territory is not part of any internationally recognized state.<\/p>\n

The Iranian state broadcaster Press TV reports today that the conference, \u201cwhich is to focus on Israeli war crimes in Gaza,<\/span><\/a>\u201d brought together \u201clegal experts, politicians and religious figures\u201d for two days to \u201cdiscuss ways to bring Israel\u2019s top political and military leaders to trial over the atrocities committed in Gaza.\u201d Press TV says that \u201cdiscussion on a series of documents, which Iran recently sent to Interpol, implicating 15 Israeli officials, are also expected to be on the agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s Fars News Agency reports<\/span><\/a> that \u201c80 delegations from five world continents\u201d are at the conference, including leaders of Hamas.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Reuters reported that Tehran\u2019s chief prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, had drawn up charges<\/span><\/a> against 34 Israeli commanders and 115 individuals concerning their actions during the Gaza campaign. Mr. Mortazavi told Reuters that the charges included \u201cwar crimes, invasion, occupation, genocide and crimes against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Mortazavi also reportedly said that his office had \u201ccompleted our investigation\u201d of \u201c15 individuals who were among those criminals\u201d and had \u201casked Interpol to arrest these suspects.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a report by Press TV on Monday, the people Interpol was asked to help detain<\/span><\/a> include: \u201cIsraeli Premier Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Mossad Chief Meir Dagan, Chief of the General Staff of the I.D.F. Gabi Ashkenazi, and Attorney General Menachem Mazuz.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the very long odds against Interpol acting on this request, Mr. Mortazavi\u2019s boss \u2013 the country\u2019s chief prosecutor, Ayatollah Qorban-Ali Dori-Najafabadi \u2013 is proceeding with elaborate plans for trying at least some of these Israeli officials in absentia. According to The Tehran Times Iran\u2019s prosecutors will not be deterred<\/span><\/a> by not having any Israelis in custody, and the case against them \u201cwill soon be heard in a symbolic trial in Tehran.\u201d<\/p>\n

Half a world away from the Islamic Republic of Iran, officials at the International Criminal Court in The Hague are also considering the possibility of opening an investigation of Israeli actions during the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Last month Katrin Bennhold reported on The Lede\u2019s sib-blog DealBook<\/span><\/a> that the international court was \u201clooking into a request by the Palestinian Authority<\/span><\/a>\u201d to investigate Israeli actions during the war in Gaza. Soon after that, Marlise Simons of The New York Times quoted B\u00c3\u00a9atrice Le Fraper, an aide to the international court\u2019s chief prosecutor, saying that the prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, \u201chas agreed to explore if he could have jurisdiction in the case.<\/span><\/a>\u201d Still, as Ms. Simons reported, \u201caccepting jurisdiction would not automatically set off a criminal investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

This week, though, Peter Beaumont of The Guardian reported that the court \u201cis considering whether the Palestinian Authority is \u2018enough like a state<\/span><\/a>\u2019 for it to bring a case\u201d and \u201cis examining every international agreement signed by the P.A. to decide whether it behaves \u2013 and is regarded by others \u2013 as operating like a state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Ms. Le Fraper told Ms. Simons last month that court officials were \u201cstill very far from any decision\u201d on the matter, Mr. Beaumont reported this week, citing an unnamed source at the court, that it would decide whether it can investigate actions in Gaza within \u201cmonths, not years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if the court decides that the Palestinian Authority has standing as a state under international law, another sticking point would be that, as Ms. Bennhold wrote, Israel \u201cnever signed up to the I.C.C., which means the court has no jurisdiction over anything that happens on its territory.\u201d Israel does not claim Gaza as its territory, though, and as Ms. Bennhold noted, \u201cthe Palestinians argue that following Israel\u2019s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza they have sovereignty over the narrow strip, and last month handed the court an official letter recognizing its jurisdiction there.\u201d<\/p>\n

No matter what the court eventually decides about Gaza, of course, since Israel has not signed the Rome Statute, the 2002 treaty that created the court, it is hard to imagine a scenario under which any Israeli government would actually hand one of its citizens over to stand trial in The Hague.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Robert Mackey\u00a0| On the same day that the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for the president of Sudan on war crimes charges, Iran\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, opened an international conference in Tehran that will press Interpol to help Iranian prosecutors arrest 15 Israeli leaders on war crimes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-war-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}