Lebanon’s military prosecutor on Sunday handed judicial authorities a list of 24 people who survived the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, asking that their testimony be heard, reported the Daily Star newspaper.
The move followed judicial proceedings recently begun in Beirut against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in connection with the 1982 killings, said the paper.
The move was in line with the efforts made in Beirut to build up a legal case against the Israeli premier, which is expected to be submitted to The Hague-based International Court of Law.
Sharon was Israel’s defense minister at the time of the massacres, when Israeli troops controlled West Beirut.
Informed sources told the paper that eyewitness reports were expected to play an important part in the suit.
On Thursday, militia-leader-turned-politician, Elie Hobeika, expressed willingness to appear before a Belgian court currently studying the possibility of charging Sharon with crimes against humanity for his role in the massacres.
He claimed that he had evidence proving he had nothing to do with the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatilla, when he was a senior officer of the Christian Lebanese Forces.
Hobeika held several portfolios in postwar cabinets and lost his seat as Baabda MP in last year’s polls.
Hobeika, who held a news conference at the Journalists Union Headquarters in Sioufi, said he would not elaborate on the nature of the documents, but he repeatedly stressed that they would “change the story told by the Kahan Commission.”
In 1983, Israel’s Kahan Commission blamed Hobeika, then a top-ranking Lebanese Forces official, for personally directing the Sabra and Shatilla slaughter.
The commission also found then-defense minister Sharon “indirectly responsible” for the deaths, and said he had disregarded “the dangerous acts of vengeance and bloodshed” committed by Lebanese Forces militiamen inside the camps.
Nearly two dozen survivors of the killings filed suit in a Belgian court last month, accusing Sharon of crimes against humanity.
The suit, spearheaded by prominent Lebanese lawyer Chibli Mallat, was made possible by a 1993 Belgian law, which allows the court to try war crimes cases unrelated to Belgium.
Hobeika, who has yet to face any criminal inquiry over his possible role in the killings, said he was looking forward to the trial because it offered him a chance to prove his innocence and that of the “Lebanese party which the Israelis incriminated.”
“I am totally comfortable discussing the Sabra and Shatilla issue before the Belgian court,” he said. “Perhaps, I will be given an opportunity, for the first time in 19 years, to expose the truth, defend myself, and present hard-core, irrefutable evidence … that I am innocent.”
But Hobeika denied that he might testify against Sharon in order to cut a deal with those trying to indict the Israeli prime minister.
“I don’t need to make any deals,” he said.
He also described Belgium as “a neutral location far from the influence of political pressures,” and said he was speaking because the time is “right” for him to “act after a long period of silence.” – Albawaba.com
