Belgium's supreme appeals court ruled on Wednesday that a genocide lawsuit against Ariel Sharon could go ahead once he no longer enjoyed immunity as Israel's prime minister, the plaintiffs' lawyer said, according to Reuters.
The ruling opened the way for survivors of a 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees to press their case against the Israeli leader, whom they hold responsible for the deaths of hundreds of their kin in Israeli-occupied Beirut.
The survivors had appealed against a lower court ruling last June that Sharon could not be prosecuted the massacre in the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut because he was not in Belgium. Sharon was defense minister at the time of the massacre.
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