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2005-09-17 Britain
Sharon fears arrest if he visits London
Israeli leader snubs Blair’s invitation after court issues warrant for general
BRITAIN is desperate to avoid a diplomatic row with Israel after Ariel Sharon apparently snubbed an invitation from Tony Blair to visit London, claiming that he feared arrest.

The Israeli Prime Minister is understood to have cited the case of a senior general who narrowly escaped detention at Heathrow on war crimes charges last week. Doran Almog remained on an El Al Boeing 747 rather than risk falling into the hands of Scotland Yard after a human rights group lodged charges that cannot be brought in Israel.

Mr Blair suggested that Mr Sharon could visit Britain when the pair met for talks on the sidelines of the United Nations’ 60th anniversary summit in New York. The Israeli premier shot back that because of his years of army service he could also find himself facing arrest.

“I would really like to visit Britain,” Mr Sharon was said to have told Mr Blair. “The trouble is that I, like Major-General Almog, also served in the (Israeli Defence Force) for many years. I too am a general. I have heard that the prisons in Britain are very tough. I wouldn’t like to find myself in one.”

The growing legal threat to Israeli officers also forced the former Chief of the Army Staff, Moshe Ya’alon, to cancel a fund-raising visit to London because of fears that he might be arrested on war crimes charges relating to attacks on Palestinian civilians and property.

Israeli authorities have also warned the serving chief of staff, Major-General Dan Halutz, against travelling to Britain because of the war crimes complaints filed against him by the left-wing army “refusenik” group, Yesh Gvul.

Silvan Shalom, the Israeli Foreign Minister, said the attempted arrest of Major General Almog and the risk to others as an “outrage”, saying he would press British authorities for a change in the law.

Mr Shalom said: “The fact that Israeli soldiers and high-ranking officials are prevented from entering European countries is an outrage. We take a grave view of this. Don’t forget that Britain has troops in Iraq. What will it do if other countries decide that British soldiers and officers committed war crimes in Iraq? Will it consent to having them arrested in other countries? I think it should change at once.”

Israeli Army radio quoted aides of Mr Sharon yesterday saying that Mr Blair was “clearly embarrassed” by the exchange at the UN meeting and promised to take care of the matter.

Downing Street played down the incidents. It said that Mr Blair had pointed out to Mr Sharon that, just like Israel, Britain had a court system independent of government.

A spokesman refused to comment further, saying that the meeting between the two was private. Scotland Yard had been waiting at Heathrow for Mr Almog with an arrest warrant issued 24 hours earlier at Bow Street Magistrates Court. Judge Timothy Workman had authorised the general’s arrest for questioning about the destruction by troops under his command of 59 Palestinian homes in Gaza in 2002. The message that reached Mr Almog came from Israel’s military attache in London — at that moment hurrying along the M4 towards the airport. Mr Almog said: “The chief steward said the attache was on his way and wanted to speak to me. I phoned him and he told me not to get off the plane.”

The call preserved the general’s liberty and prevented a diplomatic incident. But a political and legal storm has followed. The opposing factions in the Israel-Palestine conflict are both crying foul. One side wants an explanation of how the former general came to be tipped off and why police did not board the aircraft to arrest him.

The other is demanding to know what business it is of the British courts what the Israeli army does in fighting what it sees as its “war on terror”.

Although it is tempting to see the General Pinochet case as the origin of such actions, they are based on the 1957 Act that enshrined the 4th Geneva Convention in English law.

Article 146 obliges Britain to search for persons alleged to have committed war crimes and bring them before our courts “regardless of their nationality”. One explanation for not arresting Mr Almog on the aircraft lies in the quasi-legal doctrine of comity, the concept of maintaining good relations with friendly states.
Posted by Groluns Snoluter6338 2005-09-17 11:31|| || Front Page|| [11144 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 It seems obvious to me that Iseael needs to file international charges against all members of the "Human Rights Group" that "Lodged Charges"

That should put a swift end to this nonsense, to have these protesters confined to Britian and not allowed to leave for fear of going to jail in Israel.

Or better yet, have the warrants unannounced, so these morons get picked up before they can be warned.

Just think, Morons like this having the exact same thing done to them, I can hear the screams of "Unfair" now

"The Golden Rule" seems specificly designed for this event.
Posted by Redneck Jim 2005-09-17 12:55||   2005-09-17 12:55|| Front Page Top

#2 Wouldn't he have Diplo immunity?
Posted by raptor 2005-09-17 13:06||   2005-09-17 13:06|| Front Page Top

#3 What you're witnessing here with the Israelis is Legal Terrorism - one group using laws in one nation, meant for one purpose, to attack and limit another group. Needless to say, it's being practiced by the islamofascinutjobs against its principal enemies, Israel and the United States. The nations responsible need to change their laws so they cannot be used by third-party groups, or the rest of us need to start using the same laws against OUR enemies. Frankly, this kind of "war" makes me want to break some heads. It's slimy and dishonest, totally abhorrent to those of us trained to kill people and break things.
Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot  2005-09-17 14:04|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]  2005-09-17 14:04|| Front Page Top

#4 It's called lawfare.
Posted by Mrs. Davis 2005-09-17 14:53||   2005-09-17 14:53|| Front Page Top

#5 I think "Fears" is the wrong word. "Doesn't want to step in the sh*t" would be more accurate, IMO.
Posted by xbalanke 2005-09-17 15:07||   2005-09-17 15:07|| Front Page Top

#6 If Britain's courts allow such nonsense, their diplomats, bureaucrats, and military should have no immunity either, anywhere. Same for the rest of the EU
Posted by Frank G">Frank G  2005-09-17 15:16||   2005-09-17 15:16|| Front Page Top

#7 #4: It's called lawfare.

Oh beautiful Mrs D, I think you just coined a phrase.
Posted by Redneck Jim 2005-09-17 15:26||   2005-09-17 15:26|| Front Page Top

#8 Doesn't a serving minister of Government have diplomatic immunity when visiting a host country?

Posted by john 2005-09-17 15:45||   2005-09-17 15:45|| Front Page Top

#9 Prime Minister General Ariel Sharon is making a valid point by overtly refusing to go to Britain. These laws were pushed through the EU system specifically to get him arrested, with various other Israeli officials as a lagniappe. If Blair doesn't want to be embarassed by such things, he's going to have to get those laws off the books, not merely refuse to enforce them for Sharon, because General Sharon considers this to be a strategic rather than tactical goal. And he's right, as this was a major step in the process of separating the State of Israel from the rest of humanity.
Posted by trailing wife 2005-09-17 16:06||   2005-09-17 16:06|| Front Page Top

#10 I'd like to be that clever. This topic has been discussed sufficiently that some one developed the term some time ago.
Posted by Mrs. Davis 2005-09-17 16:17||   2005-09-17 16:17|| Front Page Top

#11 trailing wife---good comments. Sharon should have diplomatic immunity, since he is the leader of the Israeli government. His actions in refusing to enter the UK, even though he has diplomatic immunity is putting the ball squarely in Tony's court. Blair has to put the screws on the meatballs and the system that enables this behavior. Diplomatic immunity would protect Sharon, per se. Hell, look at the NORKS. They jet set to and fro at will with their diplo pouches full of narcotics, and nobody stops them. They are using the system, too.
Posted by Alaska Paul">Alaska Paul  2005-09-17 18:51||   2005-09-17 18:51|| Front Page Top

#12 Lawfare is one name for it. I have been privately calling it the "Revenge of the Pussies" for some time now. You remember the type in high school or college, right. Passive aggressive, always carried a big chip on his shoulder, smart, really smart, but never knowing quite when to give up. He might have had a couple of geeky friends that worshipped the ground he walked on, but he would have thrown them to the dogs in a heartbeat if that betrayal would get an in with the in-crowd. He probably found himself tossed into a few dumpsters in his time. His need to belong was almost as great as his need to attack the popular kids. I could pretty much sum this person up in two words: Paul Krugman.

Well now he's a lawyer or tenured academic and the rules are different. You can't give him wedgies or toss him in the dumpster anymore. He knows the law and is well connected to the big charitable trusts, which are funded by guilt-ridden trust fund kids. Now he has it all. He gets to schmooze with the most popular kids of all, while pissing all over the jocks and work-a-day kids who trashed him in high school. And he hates America and the jock-focused, popularity-driven culture that failed to recognize his brilliance so many years ago.

The flip side of the coin is that he'll support anything that is in opposition to that culture. The popular kids went to church, got big cars on their 16th birthdays, and went home to their nicely kept suburban houses paid for by their corporate dads. So fuck all that, right?

Religion? He'd like to see the Lenin Constitution clause of "freedom of religion and anti-religious propaganda" adopted. Big cars? America is wasteful. Let's regulate them out of existence (with exceptions of course for me and my trust fund enablers). Suburbia? Wasteful. Unsustainable. Sterile. We'll deal with that in due time. Corporations? Well, we haven't yet invented an economic engine to produce enough wealth for our welfare state, but we'll do everything that we can to hobble them and tax them.

Who would have thought that the greatest danger to our democracy would not be tyranny of the strong or of the majority, but of the pussies? It's only logical for them to ally with the Islamists since they are the near perfect antithesis of America and our Constitution.

How do we deal with them? I think that fewer laws would be a good start. I've always been fond of Heinlein's proposal that if you don't serve (and he didn't limit his definition of service to the military), then you don't vote. Perhaps we have a Saturnalia every year were we find all the Paul Krugmans and Joan Blades and ritually toss them in a dumpster -- just to remind them of who's in charge.
Posted by 11A5S 2005-09-17 19:03||   2005-09-17 19:03|| Front Page Top

#13 Let's abandon diplomatic immunity -- there were a lot of folks visiting New York last week that I would have liked to round up.
Posted by Darrell 2005-09-17 19:37||   2005-09-17 19:37|| Front Page Top

#14 I wouldn't know where to start. Castro is always a good choice for arrest and trial.

Or, how about Fischer? Find some other European with ties to Red Army Faction or some similar Soviet-backed group. Or just grab the former East German officials. After all EU human rights certainly is more important than any deal Kohl made.
Posted by Jackal">Jackal  2005-09-17 20:14|| home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]">[home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]  2005-09-17 20:14|| Front Page Top

#15 If we just kill 50% of the lawyers it would be a good start fighting this crap. Also don't let any US military visit Europe unless it is to travel directly into US controled areas. Our military is already a target.
Posted by Sock Puppet O´ Doom 2005-09-17 22:30||   2005-09-17 22:30|| Front Page Top

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