Amnesty says Israel has 'case to answer', cites own evidence

10.20am

Amnesty International is accusing Israel of serious human rights abuses during its occupation of the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin and has pressed for a full investigation to see if they amounted to war crimes.

Basing its allegations on statements from Palestinians and what it said was evidence from its own observers who entered the West Bank town minutes after the Israeli withdrawal, Amnesty said it had clear evidence of serious crimes.

"We have concluded, on a preliminary basis, that very serious violations of human rights were committed. We are talking here (about) war crimes," Javier Zuniga, the human rights group's regional director, told a news conference.

"We believe that Israel has a case to answer."

Palestinians say several hundred people may have died during the Jenin offensive, part of an assault on the West Bank launched after scores of Israelis died in a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings.

Israel has come under international pressure over the incursion into the camp, which it described as a nest of terrorists. It says about 70 Palestinians, mostly fighters, died during fierce street battles.

The Israeli army has denied allegations of a "massacre" and said it took every precaution to avoid civilian casualties although it has admitted some were killed in the fighting, which reduced large swathes of the refugee camp to rubble.

Kathleen Cavanaugh, a law lecturer from Galway University in Ireland, said Amnesty's charges came under three major areas: the destruction of property, the use of excessive force and its failure to protect civilian refugees living in the town.

She also cited Palestinian witness statements suggesting the army had carried out "a number of extrajudicial executions, particularly at the early stages of its incursion".

Old people and children caught up in the fighting said they had also been given no chance to flee the scenes of the battle, Cavanaugh said.

Forensic pathologist Derrick Pounder from Dundee University in Scotland, who had just returned from Jenin, said the lack of severely injured people admitted to the hospital backed claims that Palestinian doctors and ambulance men had been impeded.

"There were no severely injured in the hospital, and very few corpses. It is inconceivable that, as well as the dead, there were not large numbers of severely injured," said Pounder, who estimated a conflict of this nature and intensity would have produced roughly three badly injured victims to every one dead.

He said he saw 21 Palestinians corpses in Jenin hospital. The casualties were a mixture of civilian and military, he said, and included three women.

One was a 52-year-old man, wearing sandals, who had been shot in the chest, and another 38-year-old, wearing ordinary clothes, had been shot in the back and the top of the foot.

"The claim that only fighters were killed is simply not true," Pounder said. "In Jenin, there have certainly been mass killings -- both of combatants and civilians."

Pounder said the refugee camp should now be treated as a crime scene, and a full international team of investigators similar to The Hague Tribunal for former Yugoslavia be allowed in to try and piece together exactly what happened.

Amnesty said it had found no evidence of mass graves or any support for allegations that women had been raped by troops.

Meanwhile UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has chosen former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari to lead a three-member team to look into Israel's siege of the Jenin camp..

The other two members are Sadako Ogata, a former UN High Commissioner For Refugees, and Cornelio Sommaruga, the former Swiss head of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

"I hope I have put together a team that everyone would accept as competent and as the best we could put together," Annan said.

The panel intends to meet in Geneva, probably on Wednesday, and Ahtisaari said he hoped it would leave for the region by the end of the week.

Israel reluctantly agreed to the fact-finding mission on Friday after pulling out of Jenin, the scene of fierce fighting with Palestinian gunmen in a three-week Israeli offensive in search of "terrorist networks."

Ahtisaari has often served as a trouble-shooter for the United Nations since heading a 1989-91 peacekeeping operation that led to the independence of Namibia, then under South African control. He also was as an international representative in the former Yugoslavia.

Ogata, who left her post in 2000 after 10 years as refugee chief, now serves as Japan's envoy for Afghanistan reconstruction. Sommaruga, head of the ICRC from 1987 to 1999, serves on a variety of foundations.

The team will be accompanied by a military expert, retired US Army Maj. Gen. Bill Nash, and an Irish police commissioner, Peter Fitzgerald.

Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian UN observer, called the panel "people with high integrity and credibility" and said Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, welcomed them.

"The minimum is that we have a very serious war crime at hand," he said, adding that "unbelievable atrocities committed by the Israeli side cannot be justified by fierce fighting."

Several Israeli Cabinet members criticized the mission, approved by the UN Security Council on Friday after Israel consented in telephone call to Annan from Peres.

Asked if he consulted with Israel on members of the team, Annan said: "I did consult Israeli authorities in the sense that they gave me an assurance that they would co-operate with anyone I send down to look into what happened in Jenin and that they had nothing to hide."

But before the team was named, Israeli officials let it be known that three names were unacceptable: Norwegian Terje Roed-Larsen, Annan's envoy in the Middle East; Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; and Peter Hansen, the commissioner of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is responsible for Palestinian refugees.

Robinson had been denied entry to Israel and Roed-Larsen has sharply criticized the Israeli army for the devastation at Jenin and for its delay in allowing outsiders to see the camp. None of the three were considered for the team, Annan said.

Yet Annan defended all three officials, calling them "extraordinary international civil servants."

On Sunday, he issued a statement expressing full confidence in Roed-Larsen, one of the first international officials to survey Jenin. The Israeli Cabinet considered breaking ties with him but took no action.

Annan said he was disappointed that Roed-Larsen had been publicly attacked for "just talking about what he saw."

"He never accused Israel of a massacre. He never even used the word massacre," Annan said.

- REUTERS

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