EGYPT’S attorney general will examine demands for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to be investigated with a view to trying him for involvement in the alleged killing of Egyptian prisoners during two Arab-Israeli wars, legal officials said Thursday. The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) has filed a complaint with attorney general Maher Abdel Wahed against Sharon, his Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer and six other Israelis, the officials said. The EOHR complaint wants Egypt to investigate and try them for their roles in “war crimes, including killing, torture and exterminating Egyptian prisoners and civilians,” during the 1956 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars. Sharon is currently potentially facing two lawsuits in Belgium over the massacre of between 800 and 1_500 Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, when he was defence minister. – AFP
Thursday August 9, 2001