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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 September 2000 Issue No. 498 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 September 2000 Issue No. 498
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters After the fact
By Amira HoweidyFive years after the Egyptian and Israeli press sent shockwaves throughout the nation by publishing testimonies of Israeli officers confessing to the murder of Egyptian prisoners of war (POWs) in the 1956 and 1967 wars, the government is finally taking action. Newly-appointed Prosecutor-General Maher Abdel-Wahed decided last week to launch an investigation after receiving a complaint from the so-called, and previously unheard of, Egyptian Committee for the Unity of the Arab Nation.
The sudden revival of the case was met with evident lack of enthusiasm from activists who once gave great publicity to the Israeli atrocities.
"I was truly shocked when I read the news in newspapers," said Amir Salem, director of the Legal Research and Resource Centre for Human Rights (LRRCH), which had repeatedly urged government bodies to take action. "What is the Egyptian Committee for the Unity of the Arab Nation? Who has ever heard of it? And why is the prosecutor-general, and not the Foreign Ministry, opening the investigation?" he asked.
The prosecutor-general's office will not take charge of the investigation; it will fall under the jurisdiction of the district prosecutor for southern Giza.
Says Hafez Abu-Se'eda, secretary-general of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR): "We really don't need an investigation into whether Israeli officers committed atrocities or not. We want the government to approach the United Nations and the International Court of Justice and demand a serious inquiry. How will the district prosecutor for southern Giza help in this?" he told Al-Ahram Weekly.
The timing of the prosecutor-general's decision to address this national issue, years after the details were made public, has also been questioned.
"Why now, and in this manner? It seems it's for political purposes," suggested Salem.
Public outrage ran high in August 1995 following disclosures that Egyptian POWs, some of them wounded, were killed in cold blood by Israeli captors in the 1956 and 1967 wars. The horrifying accounts published in the Israeli press were based on the testimony of Israeli officers who expressed no remorse, describing their behaviour as legitimate and natural in the heat of battle.
The drama unfolded when two Israeli officers, Arye Biro and Mordechai Brown, confessed openly, with facts and figures, to Maariv newspaper that they and other Israeli officers had carried out collective massacres of Egyptian POWs during the wars of 1956 and 1967. According to these confessions, Biro and his unit killed 49 unarmed POWs in the Sinai during the war of 1956. And Brown, commander of battalion 890, was responsible for the deaths of more than 500 POWs, including civil workers, during the war of 1967. It was also revealed that the murdered POWs were forced to dig their own graves with their hands and then were shot in the back.
The confessions triggered shockwaves back home. Several rights groups took it upon themselves to investigate the matter further and came up with extensive documentation, based on eyewitness accounts, of what actually happened. A report issued by the EOHR entitled Crime and Punishment listed the Israeli violations in detail. It also pointed out that these acts contravene international humanitarian law provisions enshrined in the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which Israel signed on 12 August 1949, as well as the two Additional Protocols of 1977.
Specifically, the EOHR said, the atrocities violate Articles 12, 13, 121 and 129 of the Third Geneva Convention. Article 13 states that POWs should be treated humanely at all times and that any action or non-legitimate negligence, which may result in the death of a POW is prohibited. Subjecting a POW to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experimentation is also prohibited.
Both the EOHR and LRRCH filed lawsuits with Egyptian courts demanding that the government take action, specifically suggesting that it take the case to the International Court of Justice. Press reports of the atrocities were published under such headlines as: "We demand another Nuremberg" and "Egypt will avenge its sons." Several prominent intellectuals, such as Ismail Sabri Abdallah, announced plans for establishing a committee that would bring to justice the Israeli soldiers who murdered Egyptian POWs. And from time to time, officials at the Foreign Ministry made statements in that vein.
However, what actually materialised on the government level was a 1,000-page report by the Foreign Ministry which mostly contained the same material as that of the EOHR's Crime and Punishment report. Despite several complaints to former Prosecutor-General Ragaa El-Arabi, no official investigation was ever launched.
For Salem, the "case was left to die a slow death."
"For the past five years, I've had a case in court demanding the government take the proper course of action, and nothing has been done about it," he added.
Egypt, he argued, "wants to take up the issue but doesn't want to cause diplomatic problems with Israel or the United States. This is a very odd situation."
Officials at the Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the prosecutor's decision to open an inquiry.
But not everyone agrees that the move is politically motivated. Political analyst Tahseen Bashir finds Egyptian-Israeli relations to be "quite normal; in fact, they're smooth," he told the Weekly. "If the prosecutor wants to open an inquiry, he has enough reasons to do so, and they do not have to be linked to the peace process."
Related stories:
The hero returns 18 - 24 February 1999Related sites:
The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR)
