ISRAEL - Terror survivor to sue Arafat in Belgian court

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13 Tammuz 5761 15:29Wednesday July 4, 2001

(08:30) Israeli terror survivor to sue Arafat By The Associated Press

An Israeli survivor of a terror attack said Tuesday he plans to sue Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the same Belgian court that is considering charging Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with war crimes.

Because of a flood of high-profile cases like these, the Belgian law, which allows its courts to try war crimes cases unrelated to Belgium, is embarrassing and must be changed, Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel told an Israeli newspaper.

Haim Asulin, 44, crippled in a Palestinian terror attack in the northern Israeli city of Maalot in 1974, said he would file suit against Arafat in the Belgian court on Friday.

Asulin was a 17-year-old high school student when the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) sent an armed band across the border to attack the school.

In the attack, 20 teen-agers on a day trip from a neighboring city were killed, along with three members of a local family and an Israeli soldier. Asulin was among the injured. His left arm was amputated, and he still needs hospital treatment, he said.

The DFLP is a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), headed by Arafat. Therefore, Asulin said he is suing Arafat for $1 billion, in the name of all the Maalot victims, and also expects him to be sent to prison.

"The time has come for the world to know what the murderer Arafat did to us in Maalot," Asulin told The Associated Press. "He was the direct commander ... the time has come for him to pay."

Last month, survivors of a massacre of Palestinian refugees in two Beirut camps in 1982, when the Israeli army was in control of Beirut and its allied Christian militiamen entered the camps, filed a war crimes complaint against Sharon.

He was Israel's defense minister at the time, and an Israeli commission of inquiry found him indirectly responsible for the carnage.

Asulin denied that his suit was a counter-strike to the suit against Sharon. "It is not in cooperation with the Prime Minister's office."

The burgeoning number of such suits has led to calls in Belgium to change the law. Interviewed by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, Michel said the law "hurts the relations between the countries involved and causes great embarrassment."

Sharon canceled a stop in Brussels on a short trip to Europe planned for later this week. The official explanation was lack of time, but it was assumed that the war crimes investigation against him played a part.

Michel said that law is positive, but he favored excluding heads of government from those who can be sued.

He said he tried to complete the change before July 1st, when Belgium took over the rotating presidency of the European Union, "so that Belgium's neutrality in the Middle East would remain undisputed."

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001


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