Ariel Sharon Escapes War Crimes Case

Ariel Sharon will not be facing charges in a Brussels courtroom under a controversial Belgian law that allows the country’s courts the right to try foreigners for serious human rights abuses wherever they are committed.

Last year in Belgium, a complaint was brought against the Israeli prime minister by a group of Palestinians and Lebanese charging him with crimes allegedly committed in 1982 while he was Israel's defense minister. Then, an Israeli-backed Lebanese militia killed hundreds of refugees at two refugee camps in Beirut, which was occupied by Israel at the time. The following year an Israeli commission found him indirectly responsible for the massacre.

But on Wednesday, a Belgian court dismissed the lawsuit, saying it "is not admissible because of the principle of Belgian law that crimes committed in other countries cannot be prosecuted in Belgium unless the author or presumed author has been found in Belgium," according to a court spokesman.

The rejection deals a major blow to Belgium’s controversial law, one that was used successfully last year in the prosecution of four Rwandans, two nuns and two men, for parts in their country’s 1994 genocide.

Relief and Anger

There was jubiliation among Sharon’s backers when the 22-page ruling was handed out in Brussels’ Palais de Justice on Wednesday.

"It’s a lawsuit that started with more politics than law and it is lucky that the outcome is more law then politics," Daniel Shek, director of European Affairs at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, told reporters at the court.

In Israel, Prime Minister Sharon said Belgium should not have even considered the complaint. "One nation cannot judge another nation," he told reporters. "A nation that doesn’t, fortunately, have to fight terror and war will hardly understand a nation that has to do it."

In Lebanon, Palestinian refugees saw the ruling as a sign that Europe had adopted the position of the United States in backing Israel against the Palestinians.

"There were already steps to head off court proceedings, but they let them go on to display a sort of fraudulent democracy," said Hussein al-Jamal, a resident of the Rashideyeh camp in south Lebanon.

Human Rights groups also spoke out against the court’s decision. Amnesty International called the ruling a "catastrophe scenario".

Michael Verhaeghe, one of the lawyers for the group of Palestinians, said his clients would take the case to Belgium’s Supreme Court of Appeal.